


Vanitas vanitatum

by oxfordRoulette



Series: Catacombs [3]
Category: Homestuck
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fantasy, Bad Parenting, Body Horror, Dark Humor, Depression, Eventual Happy Ending, Explicit Sexual Content, Illustrated, Implied/Referenced Abuse, Lavish Depictions of Food, M/M, Necromancy, Political Drama, Slow Burn, Suicide, Swords & Sorcery
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-12
Updated: 2018-07-19
Packaged: 2019-02-13 17:56:09
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 34
Words: 156,428
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12989412
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/oxfordRoulette/pseuds/oxfordRoulette
Summary: You've determined the hobbies of the monarch you serve are as follows:1. Ill-timed pranks.2. Cooking.3. Subconsciously pulling elaborate political schemes off perfectly, ad infinitum, every one of which inches his mind closer to some ineffable dark chasm you're curious to find the depth of.Anyway, he makes damn good lasagna.(although part of a series, this fic is a standalone. feel free to read this first!)





	1. Two Days 'Til Bouillabaisse

**Author's Note:**

> Three things:
> 
> 1\. This fic runs on modified D&D mechanics  
> 2\. If you think that it's a reference to something..... it probably is  
> 3\. Please make sure to read the tags, although keep in mind I’m being pretty liberal with them (is killing your own clone suicide??? y/n??? comment below)
> 
> Like I said in the description, you are welcome to read this fic first. The other two are SUPER different from this one, so no harm done if you don't read them. You'll get a pretty neat reading experience if you read only Vanitas vanitatum. 
> 
> If you've read Sepulcrum romanum it will be less plot twisty but made up for IN SPADES by the inescapable sense of dread you will feel throughout this entire fucking story.
> 
> HAVE FUN!!!!

You stand outside the Patrician's personal foyer at seven PM, knuckles poised over the door, and will yourself to knock.

You've come to talk with him about a personal matter. You’ve got questions, dammit, an organized list of problematic items introduced into your life by he himself. You’ve drawn it up from most important to least important. Your list is superfluous, of course, your main concern can be summed up sweetly and succinctly as such:

You have no idea why the fuck you're here.

You're currently a trussed-up lapdog in the Patrician’s Secret Police. You don’t like the job, nor did you want it, nor do you have any particular advantage over the people who _did_ want your position. You don't know why you had to be rudely uprooted and carried bridal style in the rugged arms of Mandatory Employment to the capital city. You’d rarely been to the capital before this job and said visits were always ordered by your superior officers. You’ve been here a couple months now, and you decided in the first hour that you don't like this city. You don't like it one bit.

Porkmor-kahn is a city with a dumb name and dumber urban planning. The city is placed on the meeting point of Earthen and Alternian territory, the border-line drawn by a crystal clear, drinkable river that runs through the whole thing. It's aesthetically pleasing— different architectures from different species coming together and colliding enthusiastically in the middle like two thirsty porn stars. But it's inefficient. Wrapped up in paperwork and treaties of two kingdoms in tenuous peace. You need a literal passport to go get some fried crabcakes on the troll-side of the city. You shouldn’t need a passport to get crabcakes. You shouldn’t need to get a fucking visa to dig your teeth into things that may or may not be seafood pounded vaguely into a circle.

The palace you currently reside in is built like a tiered bridge over the widest part of the river. It's gigantic. It features gardens, libraries, kitchens, daycare, yoga classes, takeout & delivery, basically its own mini city. Both the royal family and a lucky tyrian blood each get their respective half of it. The tyrian troll hasn't been residing in the palace, busy with more important shit in Alternia-proper, but the Patrician lives and works here. He's forced to, due to the nature of his office.

Legally, he's only an overlord of a fiefdom. Effectively, he's the king of a whole country. Due to the historical scheming of his predecessors and totalitarian laws they've put in place, spiraling on top of each other like some sort of infinite upwards legal staircase of dictatorship/monarchy that just keeps happening, he's essentially the de-facto ruler of all of humanity. Sure, he's got an elected council, but they're just tufts of hot air crafted into people shapes. When the Patrician says 'jump' the politicians say 'yes sir' and hope they get the right level of height out of sheer shit-their-pants fear at what he could possibly do to them if they jumped incorrectly.

Said fear is what stops you from knocking.

Patrician Egbert just took office, eight months ago. He’s more… lax… than his predecessor. You're used to the old Patrician's policies, the brutal decorum of Patrician Betty Crocker. You don't think your Pavlovian aversion is unwarranted. If you visited _her_ at an odd hour, she'd pluck out your eyes as punishment, then bake them into spooky Hallows Eve cookies. If you had any eyes to pluck out, that is.

You can see the pulsing spells winding and curling over the Patrician's door, nearly-invisible and waiting for your touch. Once you knock, they will read your intent down to the letter. They will tell him if you're an assassin, whether a spell needs to be cast to defer you, whether guards need to be summoned, whether the door needs to be re-enforced. It's fine spellcrafting work. The Patrician is an expert magician in the truest sense of the term.

You continue to stand outside the door like a buffoon and let yourself get distracted by your thoughts, spiraling downward at an alarming rate. Whatever. Better than forcing yourself to actually take action and knock on this fucking door.

You hypothesize you got promoted because of your cousins. You're sure you got a glowing recommendation from Dave: "hey yeah you want a master of cloak and dagger politics well egbert my man i certainly know a dude". Seriously, fuck Dave. You want to be back in the field. Conniving, plotting, looking at maps a whole lot, letting your golden locks fly free, and riding horses. Lots of horses.

You were a top ranking Case Manager in the field for the last couple years, but you got this "promotion" during the staff overhaul after the new Patrician's coronation. You're better at case work, much more talented at doling out assignments and pulling the strings on a police force than you are at… whatever the hell you’re doing now. Security management and paperwork, pretty much.

You still can't bring yourself to knock. You've got a stick shoved too far up your ass, an ingrained fear of creative punishment holding your knuckles back from rapping. So you compromise with yourself. Instead of making a sound and disturbing the quietness of the hallway, you reach out and press your hand to the spells on the door.

They flare up with white light, wind-like spirals and swirls drawn to your fingertips like friendly kittens trying to rub against your leg. A couple seconds go by, your blood thuds in your ears, and you hear the click of the door unlocking for you. You take a deep breath, to calm your heart.

You push on the brass grates, and enter into the foyer. It's old brickwork and arched gold doors and high ceilings, ancient murals of the stars painted all over the walls. There are a couple tall hallways branching off the foyer, one of them lit by two alchemical lanterns hanging from the door frame. You pick the convenient glowing hallway to venture down. It seems appropriate.

The alchemic lanterns, brass and candelabra-like, flicker and dim as you follow the designated path. You only go in the doors indicated by the lights. Your path eventually curves west and leads to a small, windowed sitting room, curtains drawn shut and a cozy fire crackling in the fireplace. The Patrician sits in a high backed, velvet armchair, his back to you. On the coffee table to his left is an empty plate and nearly empty wine glass. He just finished dinner. With his right hand, he shuffles cards. They float in tufts of wind magic you can’t feel from where you stand.

At this point, you are supposed to formally make him aware of your presence. But this new Patrician is different. You have no idea what to do here. You're not used to him. His mother demanded you go through the standard greeting every time, him, he only seems to want you to do so when it suits his whims.

Better safe than sorry, anyway. You wait in the door frame, bow at the waist even though he can’t see you, and say, "Clerk Strider, sir."

"Hi, Dirk!" says the Patrician, giddily. He waves his free hand around over the chair. "Come over here and let's chat! Do you want to sit down?"

It's taken a long while to get used to his over-friendly mannerisms. You feel out of your league with how he acts in private situations, you're used to militaristic protocol. You stride in, circle around the table, and stand at ease diagonal to him. "It's alright, sir. I won't be long."

You think this every time you look at him, and will probably continue to think it for an embarrassing amount of time— the Patrician is a buttery hot cake slathered in layers of delicious syrup. He has hair on his knuckles, a smoking jacket, and a jawline so sharp it could decapitate someone. He might be an enigmatic mystery as of yet, but you're objectively certain of one thing: he is a masterpiece of masculinity.

"Well cool, seven o'clock is my Very Important Totally Vital magic trick practice time," he says, and the cards sort themselves into a deck. He catches it in the palm of his hand, sets it on the coffee table, then winks at you. "You know I have office hours, right?"

You're… not sure what to say to that. "You have… office hours," you repeat.

The Patrician rolls his eyes, smiling in a 'can you believe this guy' way. "You'd know that if you weren't bathing for like, the whole afternoon, every day. It’s kind of weird. Don't you get all prune-y?"

Your mouth twitches. It’s surreal that someone so important knows about your bathing habits. The only people who interact with you vis a vis your absolutions are maids who bring you towels on occasion, and there’s no way he keeps tabs on their scheduling that closely. You frown, ask him, "How do you know that." 

"I'm friends with every maidservant. Gossip hour is at 5am in the laundry rooms, I make them biscuits and coffee sometimes," he says. Then to emphasize a point he really doesn't need to clarify, he leans towards you and stage-whispers, " _Every. Maidservant._ "

You appreciate a good conversation with the blue collar workers to get info, but with your methods there's always a goal and purpose. Sounds like a lot of effort for little payoff. "You seriously do that."

"How else would I know you take four hour baths that I can rub your face in when you ask dumb questions about why you keep missing my office hours?" 

“Through spying and subterfuge, like a normal leader.”

He _giggles_. He finishes off his wine before putting on a charming smile and beaming at you. "Alright, enough poking fun, back to business. So what's up?"

"Can I speak frankly?"

"Always."

"I want to know why I'm a Dark Clerk."

He shrugs. "You were doing a great job out there and deserved a bump in pay and a sweet place to live. Also I trust you? You're a pretty loyal dude from your track record."

You are a _very_ loyal dude. So loyal you have a ball of a time speaking frankly to someone at a higher station. You steel yourself to say, "That's not the reason. You're drowning in talented agents and leaders who would trip head over heels to die for the throne. I wasn't aching for a promotion. I have to ask: was it my cousins?"

"Oh!" he exclaims, looking genuinely surprised you asked. You guess he's not used to people staring a gift horse dead in the mouth. "I'm not lying when I say you really did deserve a big fat raise and some more trust, but I guess I should tell you the real-real reason I want you around. You kind of seem anxious about it. And no, it wasn't Dave and Rose, but I wouldn't know about what you can do if it weren't for them."

The Patrician's eyes light up, his glasses glinting with the reflection of the fire. He says, slowly, savoring each word, "I'll need you later, Soulwalker."

Huh. You didn’t think of that, your unique talent. Kudos to him for finding an actual use for it. You very rarely have, only when there’s a powerful necromancer involved, and most necromancers out there are pretty shitty. Hopefully it's not for some baffling, grotesque prank, knowing the other random crap he’s had his clerks do.

At least now you know you're here because you’re a means to an end. A gear in the machine. It makes you feel better, calms your nerves, suddenly makes the job more tolerable. You like a well-crafted plan.

"For what?" you ask.

"Hmm?"

"What do you need me to soulwalk for?"

He shrugs, obnoxiously. "A surprise!"

This cagey fuck. The Patrician plucks up the deck of cards from the table again, and begins shuffling them, no hands, midair. "But, I do need you for a normal, plain ol’, easy peasy task that will be much less exciting and surprising," he says, watching the cards flit between and around each other. "But probably more funny. I was going to give it to you tomorrow but, well, you're here now. Ready for an assignment?"

The Patrician flicks both his pointer fingers up, then pulls apart his hands on a horizontal plane. The deck of cards spreads out between his hands, facing down, forming a fan hanging in midair. “Pick a card, any card.”

You humor him. You pick one in the middle. It’s the king of hearts, a knife in his head.

“King of hearts, right?” asks the Patrician. 

You nod. You assume it was some kind of sleight of hand trick. “Is this card poetically appropriate imagery for the task you’re about to give me?”

“Bingo! Your task is…” He leans forward, for attempted dramatic effect. “You’re going to arrest the assassin who kills me in the minor assembly room tomorrow.”

You keep staring at the card. You don’t really see the point of sleight of hand in a world where magic literally exists. “You mean, arrest the assassin who _attempts_ to kill you, right.”

“I mean kills me,” says the Patrician, happily.

Ah, the abilities unique to the head of the royal family. An ability to spawn infinite Patricians. He can clone himself, something no one else in the entire world can do. Colloquially, you and your co-workers call it 'retcon powers' because he tends to use it to make a decision and then backpedal on it at the exact same time with different political/economic groups, leading to some kind of decision making legal paradox that gets resolved by the two parties actually sitting down together and sorting it out themselves. You can't tell if it's extremely clever or extremely dumb. But it usually works, either way. By the by, he usually doesn’t murder his doubles. Or, he usually doesn’t let _other_ people murder them, that is. He usually does it himself.

“And your double is dying for… what, exactly?” you ask.

“A good joke.”

The way the Patrician’s powers work, he’s permanently killing a literal, living, breathing version of himself. You’re no stranger to seeking death as a solution to an alarmingly high number of problems, but dying (even temporarily) for the punchline of a joke isn’t something you’d consider. Unless it’s a _really_ good joke.

“You’d kill yourself for a joke.”

He shrugs. “It’s not really me. It’s just the me that’s left that’s real. The other ones are irrelevant.”

You’d facepalm if it weren’t for your rigid and impeccable control. You cannot imagine the plane of existence this guy occupies if he thinks literal clones of himself aren’t real. If you had the ability to duplicate yourself, you’d be painfully aware how real they are. You’d constantly remind yourself how real they are. You’d drive yourself up the fucking wall, up five stories worth of fucking wall and launch into fucking space from how real they are.

“Anyway,” continues the Patrician. He waves his hand, there’s a gust of wind that ruffles your uniform, makes the fire flicker, and the spread of cards and the king of hearts go flying. “It’s going to be easy. This assassin’s going to stand up, kill me instantly, and you do your cool fantasy ninja thing and disable them for questioning later. Won’t even need a trial, proof’s in the pudding, we’re going to have witnesses and everything. You’re going to have to tell me the look on their face when they realize they just killed a fake-me. It’s going to be hilarious!”

Admittedly, the last Patrician used those cloning powers for way stupider shit. Like baking.

The cards stack themselves neatly on the end table. He’s very good with wind magic, organizing them so well with nothing but small gusts of air. You stare at it. “Is that all, sir?”

“That’s all. Unless you want to visit some more?” he says, with a wink. You feel mildly uncomfortable.

“I’ll take my leave,” you say, bowing to him. He nods, dismissing you.

“If you want to chat again, come during dinner,” the Patrician calls to you, when you’re at the door to the hall. “I’m making bouillabaisse the night after next!”

You nod, which is stupid because he can’t see you since you’re standing in the fucking doorway. Odd that he cooks for himself when he has quite literally an army of servants at his beck and call. You don’t understand why. Family tradition? Concerns about poisoning? Enjoys the challenge? The servants use too much salt? It’s probably that last one.

You leave his personal quarters, and the door to his foyer slams shut behind you, the spells glowing in a sudden burst of white. They dim when they reset themselves, security patterns back in place after your departure. The hall outside is cold in this autumn night, and you rub your arms to get some warmth back into them. 

You haven’t eaten your dinner yet. Soup sounds good about now. Bouillabaisse sounds even better, but, well, you’re about as good at cooking as your soulwalking talent is at being useful. You’re curious to know what specific plan he wants your talent for. Deathly curious. 

You might even discuss it with your cousin.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I post updates and stuff about this AU at <http://oxfordroulette.tumblr.com>


	2. The Price of a Good Trick

You get the chance to talk to your cousin right before the assembly. She's also involved with the ‘task,’ which you're pleased about. You like working with her.

The eternally-fantastic Roxy Lalonde. Your relative, coworker, and a girl so endearing she managed to wiggle straight into your heart more efficiently than anyone you've ever known.

You were introduced to your cousin seven months ago. She was hidden away in Alternia (of all places), dating the instigator of the Alternian Succession Crisis (of all people), and was estranged from your inexplicably tight-knit family (was kidnapped as a baby). She has, in the meantime, dumped the 'girlfrond,' moved to Earthen territory, become fluent in a whole new language, and cozied up to you and Rose and Dave like a warm blanket. You love her a whole lot.

Roxy was hired as a member of the secret police well before you. She was one of the first people he took in as part of his staff overhaul. You thought the Patrician was an idiot for hiring her at first —fantastic as she is, she has no experience with this secret police business— but she's proven herself brilliant and coercive and loyal and powerful. She also has the surprising advantage of _lacking_ any military or field training, meaning she doesn't have the fist-up-her-ass attitude you and your other coworkers have when you talk with the insanely casual Patrician. She's one of his favorites.

You meet her outside her dorm, a quiet room in the barracks she shares with three other people, all of them part of the normal clerk divisions. As far as anyone knows, you and Roxy are regular, vanilla clerks too. The only difference is that you can go direct to the Patrician or the guard captain, instead of going through whatever managerial setup the normal guards have to go through. You also do the more unscrupulous tasks that might be illegal. And you get a big fat nasty stack of cash for it.

Roxy’s in her uniform, the only difference from yours being the style of her blindfold. Not that it’s a standard part of the uniform, it’s only a Strider/Lalonde feature, for modesty. She shuts her dorm door behind her, bouncing on her heels.

"Oh, man, Dirk!" she says, heavily accented in a way you usually only hear with trolls. You like how she says your name, the 'r' is a hard roll held just a little too long, like she doesn’t want it to leave her mouth. "Dirk, the lil' ones did something so silly today, I gotta tell you about it!"

You lower your blindfold a bit, exclusively for the purpose of popping a judgmental eyebrow over it. "You used your afternoon off to babysit. Again?"

She makes a pouty face at you and whines. "I can't help it! I've been surrounded by gray and rainbow bug things for-e-ver, humans are all new and fun and sooooo cuuuuutteee! Grubs are great but human kids? Super presh! I love every single one! And they don't try to wrastle you for dominance or bite your frond nubs off with chompy spiky teeth. Well, most of the time."

“Save your baby talk for political endeavors,” you say, light-heartedly. “I’ve got a salacious topic best discussed in an empty hallway.”

“Well lead on, Mr. Strider, and guide me down this holy hall of hot goss’,” says Roxy, bowing to you. You offer her your arm, ironically, and she takes it, ironically. You both make your way to the assembly hall with arms hooked. 

You navigate through the indoor-outdoor palace complex, taking the routes with the least people, as you speak to Roxy about what went down at the Patrician’s foyer last night. You’re climbing up the third tier of stairs to the top floor of the palace when you finish the story. Roxy unlinks her arm from yours to make a fake ‘thinking’ motion by tapping her finger against her chin.

“Huh, I dunno, nothin’ comes to mind as to what he wants your soul nabbing thing for. He defs hasn’t brought anything up to me about it. Maybe you’re here to stop a spooky haunting? Any ghosts in the place? Souls wandering around all willy-nilly?”

“Not that I can tell.”

“Hmm…” she says. You pass through a long, windowed hallway, looking out onto the tiered red and yellow gardens of the palace, and the city in autumn below. The sun is nearly set, golden light shimmering over orange leaves. “You gotta play detective, Strider! You should totes eat dinner with him tomorrow and get more info, figure out the surprise before he can blindside ya with a crazy soulwalker prank. And don’t be scared! He’s a really good cook! Like, five star chef, fancy restaurant good.”

You frown. That sounds… suspiciously intimate. “You’ve eaten dinner with him. Alone?”

You get the impression she’d be rolling her eyes here, if she had any. “Uh, yeah? He invites like, _everybody,_ I think he gets warm fuzzies from feeding people or somefin. He probs didn’t ask you until now because you don’t chill out with him one-on-one often enough.”

You cannot imagine getting over the social constructs in place in order to see the Patrician as someone to ‘chill out’ with. “What do you guys even talk about, do your interests even overlap enough to avoid a dreaded awkward dinner conversation pause? Do you have to both take large sips of your wine in order to buy time and rapidly think of a conversation topic, as one does during weird social situations they can’t dine and ditch at?”

She shrugs. “Nah. He speaks Alternian like a pro, which like, I kinda miss my birth language sometimes, you know? We can talk about anything, ‘s long as I’m able to run my mouth off. Also. The dude’s freaking _hilarious._ ”

He’s funny in the way a tired joke is funny the twentieth time you hear it, funny out of desperation. You’d be rolling your eyes here, if you had any.

You meet up at the rendezvous point, a nondescript passage behind the kitchen with exposed wood and the faint smell of old beef baked into it. Nobody’s around, but you hear kitchen staff talking and banging pots behind the wall to your right. The Patrician’s already here. He’s wearing his full uniform. Instead of a crown or some sort of jewelry signifying his power, like a normal kingdom, the Patrician gets a cloak. It makes whomever’s on the throne look like a judge, jury, and executioner.

Roxy hollers some greeting in Alternian, and the Patrician grins at her, his outfit billowing and whirling around his lower half in a great black cloud. It’s enchanted to do that. You swear the thing is sentient.

Roxy bounds over to him. They proceed to do an elaborate secret handshake that involves about five different types of fistbumps and at least one set of mutual finger pistols. You listen to them babble at each other in Alternian a bit, picking up the words that ping your simple vocabulary, like ‘apple’ and ‘evening.’

“Alright, so, everybody clear on their parts?” says the Patrician, jarringly switching back to Common. Roxy gives him a thumbs up, you nod respectfully. “Great! My turn, then.”

His mouth twitches into something that’s almost a wince, his eyes rolling up like he’s thinking too hard about a crossword puzzle. His whole body flickers, pure white, and he vanishes, the ghost of a gray shadow left in his place. It fades out of view the way the impression of the sun does if you stare at it too long and then close your eyes. Slightly adjacent to where he vanished, two Patricians, exact duplicates of one another, pop into existence with a slight crackle of white sparks. When solidified, they look each other up and down.

“So, who wants to be the real one?” he says, to himself.

“You can, if you want?” says the other one, shrugging.

“Sure, no problem,” he says, closing out the most inane conversation you’ve ever witnessed. The arbitrarily picked ‘real Patrician’ turns to Roxy, grins at her, and bows, ostentatious. He whirls his arm out, extending it to her as though offering a dance. “Well, madam, it would be just wonderful if you’d be willing to whisk me away to your secret club house!”

“Ooo! Swoon,” she says, mock-swooning. “Get ready to be whisked, Egbert. You’re gonna be a souffle when I’m done whisking, dang.”

He laughs. Roxy cracks her knuckles. She lifts up her blindfold.

Her eyes are two pure black holes, bored into her head, with a small rim of pink waterline outlining them. She has no eyelids, no sockets, just voids you’re convinced are perfect circles. A πr² of horrorterror, a remnant of your shared parentage. 

You find her eyes rather pretty, in a gothic sense. Her ‘holes’ are much different than yours. You’re a little envious. Your pair of peepers are more… disconcerting. Thus the extremely cool blindfold you are never, ever, taking off.

Besides the eyes, you and your cousins all have a gift the Deep Mothers blessed you with. Dave has flashstepping, Rose can see the future in the occasional nightmare, you're a soulwalker. Roxy has by far the most overpowered gift of them all, probably the reason she was stolen away from your family as a baby. Roxy has your Mothers’ Void.

She begins to Weep. The void trickles from her holes in thick inky tears, dribbling down her face, her chest, her stomach and legs, down to the floor like a river, forming a puddle that rapidly expands beneath the feet of both Roxy and the ‘real Patrician.’ Once it’s big enough to consume them, Roxy re-covers her eyes, and her tears cease. She takes the still-offered arm of the Patrician, and says something to him in Alternian. They drop into the void like a ship capsizing— slow enough to avoid looking like they’re free falling, fast enough so you don’t have to wait around and awkwardly watch them sink into Roxy’s tears. When the tops of their heads vanish into the puddle, the void closes up, leaving only a plain old floor.

Roxy will watch from her void, and allow the Patrician to re-enter the overworld at an appropriate time.

The ‘fake Patrician’ blinks at the floor, with interest. “That’s always so cool. Can you do anything darkness-related like that? Or like Dave’s flashstepping?”

“No.”

“Too bad,” he says, shrugging. “Anyway, ready to pull off some killer antics? Make some shenanigans happen?”

“At your word, sir,” you say, dryly.

The Patrician winks at you, and you head down the service hall, the Patrician following you. The service hall leads into an actual hall, where there’s a couple of his regular guards standing at attention against the wall. You share the same uniform as one of the normal, plebeian guards. No one can know you’re not one, thus the ‘secret’ in secret police. You’re just oozing with intrigue, all the time, damn.

A few human escorts in blue and black uniforms chaperone three mercantile looking trolls into the assembly room. You hear the Patrician hesitate, steps halting before you reach the main hall. You whip around in your usual alarmingly speedy way to look at him.

You’re too fast for your own good. You glimpse something you aren't supposed to see.

On his face, clear as a full fucking moon, is fear. Fear engraved in his features, on every line in his skin. Fear sculpted his face into this pallid, corpse-like death mask. He is wide eyed, staring somewhere over the top of your head, lips open just enough to expose gritted teeth. You've seen that kind of fear before, felt it on the rare occasion, the fear that you won't make it out of what comes next. Fear that cripples. Fear that yanks the rug out from under you.

He blinks at you, and it's gone. Just a shift of his body, a smile, and the fear vanishes. You wonder where he hid it.

"Hey, you know what would look really bad ass?" he says, sounding perfectly normal and chipper. "If you walked behind me and to my right a bit."

"Of course, sir," you say. 

You’re not sure what that was about.

You follow his instructions, lurking sightly behind him and to the right, as he strides out into the hallway. His cloak billows around him in a way that makes what should be an average walk into an epic march, the kind of walk one does when on their way to kick some ass, on their way to a final boss fight. You respect the hell out of that. It’s all about the appearance, baby.

The guards nod to him as he passes, an attendant holds open the door to the assembly room for him. Before he enters, he changes his posture. He’s a tall guy, looms over your average-at-best-height and then some, but usually bends forward a bit so it gives the impression he’s always interested in whatever you’re saying or doing. Now, he shifts the curve of his spine back, lets his shoulders relax, and elongates his neck so he looks like one of the mastercraft busts in the Royal Sculpture Museum. His expression of ‘excited to be here’ shifts into a more neutral ‘vaguely amused at everything.’ You’ve noticed he does that when he has to act slightly more serious than normal.

This small council room is a hall used for discussion that results in a minor legal decision, whether through voting, unanimous agreement, or the Patrician exerting his tyrannical dominance over the pitiful worms who dare delude they have an iota of power in this goddamn diet. He doesn't do that last one a whole lot. Sometimes, though.

It consists of a checkerboard tiled floor, two tables facing each other, observation benches containing some bored law students and two officiators/note takers, and a large imposing legal desk in the back. Stained timber scissor rafters criss cross every ten feet, supporting the ceiling in a glorious mess of dark wood. Hundreds of dusty banners and flags hang tattered and grand from the roof tresses. They're so old and faded and obscure you don't expect anyone but the most slovenly basement dwelling history nerds to know what the gray-beige insignias were supposed to signify. If anybody knows at all. You always intend to memorize as many as you can just for the hell of it, but never get around to it.

You’re the last people in. The three mercantile trolls sit at the table on the left. They wear brown leathers, goggles, empty weapon holsters, and other such nonsenses that concatenate into a big steaming heap of steampunk bullshit. Three humans: a matriarch and two young adults in stereotypical “noble” clothing sit at the opposing table. There’s three of your coworkers posted in three corners of the room. At the desk, next to the empty chair the Patrician is supposed to sit in, is his confidant, necromancer, right hand man, and whom you suspect is the real genius behind the throne. His Adviser.

She follows the same routine wherever she is. She sits. And grins. And draws some really baffling images the whole fucking time. Sometimes she whispers things to the Patrician. Sometimes he whispers things back. Sometimes she says some things that make people gasp and clutch at their metaphorical pearls, but whatever phrases make their nonexistent jewelry so suddenly theftable is lost on you. She usually only speaks in Alternian.

You’ve gleaned her personality from a couple things. The first is that she has the most gold digging, ostentatious, pirate themed wardrobe in the world, which basically writes its own in-depth character study. The second thing is that she’s apparently dependable as all hell, the Patrician seems to trust her to cover his back a bizarre amount. The third thing is more of a guesstimation based on small gestures, her abilities, and some things Jane told you: you’re pretty sure she’s straight up fuckin’ evil.

“Hi everyone,” says the Patrician, pleasantly, as he strides into the room. The law students and the six people at the tables all stand and bow, proper. He acknowledges them with a wave of his hand, walks between the tables to the desk, and says, “Are we all ready to sort out this wedding business?”

You take your place in the empty corner of the room, near Adviser Serket. The Patrician repeats (what you assume is) the same question in Alternian, then sits down.

The Patrician never sits in the fucking chair. It’s like he has an aversion to it, like he’s afraid someone turned the tables and planted a whoopee cushion on it to get him back for his inane pranks. He sits on the desk instead. Faces the audience, plants his ass on the left corner of the desk, crosses one leg over the other, and leans back on both arms. This intimidates the _shit_ out of the humans. Always does.

Trolls don’t have the same kind of political decorum tropes to lampshade so it doesn’t work on them. Well, you _think_ it doesn’t work on them. You don’t actually know the first thing about trolls.

You've never been to Alternia, except to buy some crabcakes once, and you barely deal with trolls. The only trolls that ever live permanently in Earthen territory are merchants, government employees, or disabled trolls fleeing the Condesce's cull policy. Thanks to the new Alternian empress, that third immigrant demographic might be drastically cut down in size over the next few years. 

Short of it is, you're fucking baffled by all their weird alien shit.

Everyone sits down. They begin the discussion. They flip-flop between Common and Alternian, so you catch exactly half of everything. From what you can gather, both parties are weapon manufacturers. The trolls and the humans want to marry off their respective children to make a joint family of dangerous pointy knife producers and shippers. Because of blah blah legal garbage and blah blah nobility, this violated a whole bunch of rules and counter lawsuits and worked its way to the top of the city-government branch. The Patrician himself has to authorize an exception.

You can’t tell which of the human kids is the lucky husband/bride, but the bachelor troll is a sweaty, greasy man with horns like misshapen, erect, arrow-like cocks, slicked hair tugged into a ponytail, and stupid clockwork goggles. He’s sweating. Profusely.

You play ‘who’s the assassin’ with yourself. It’s the sweaty guy with the goggles. There’s no way it’s not the sweaty guy with the goggles. You fucking win. You mentally fist bump yourself in a cool, chill way.

After the burliest troll gives a long and impassioned speech about something you can’t understand, Adviser Serket nudges the Patrician’s hand with a piece of paper. The Patrician glances at it, immediately understands all the moon runes, narcissistic self-portraits, and hieroglyphics, and says, “Uh, yeah, that would kind of merge your merchant houses and then you can bypass weapons licensing for import/export stuff. Given the current political climate in Alternia I don't know if that's appropriate…”

You take a guess that the trolls are planning on funneling weapons to the Renounced Empire. Explains the apparent future assassination attempt— the Renounced Empire has been trying to assassinate him quite a bit lately and failing spectacularly.

Adviser Serket tenses. You think she wants the marriage to happen and is trying to convince the Patrician to authorize it. But he's using the information she provides to attempt to think up excuses to prevent it. You're on Serket's side here: let it go through and then plan something to use their own free trade against them.

But it's not like you have any input. 

You think this is all dumb as rocks. If you were involved with this process… Things would be different. But you have to follow that mantra you chant to yourself every night: “orders are orders.”

You don't see the point in listening with 100% of your mental capacity if you cannot influence policy. You zone out, convincing yourself you can multitask and recall everything that happens during this meeting with perfect clarity while simultaneously daydreaming about that one hot coworker of yours riding a horse shirtless through a field of flowers. They debate goods transportation. The flowers are definitely daisies. There's some discussion on how fees are too high and they can’t make it without the marriage. Your coworker has oiled and chiseled abs.

You see the initial movement well before the assassin even unsheathes his weapon. If you weren't limited by the Patrician's orders, you could have rushed to the sweaty goggles man, drawn your sword, and decapitated him by now. Instead, you pretend you don't see him reveal the crossbow until it's too late.

It’s clever how he masked it; he hid it in the ribbing of his leather cuirass, and when it pops out it expands and assembles like a ship in a bottle. He swings the weapon up, knocks it, and fires it in one relatively swift motion. The bolt strikes the Patrician directly in the throat, sinks into his trachea smooth as butter. You get a good look at the bolt before the Patrician clasps his hands over it in pain: it's swarming with some kind of dark blue, intense, extremely high level enchantments. The kind of heavy enchantments that take a village to inscribe. This is a curse that destroys the body, makes it irresurrectable, sends the soul onto a permanent death. Adios, cloned Patrician, you knew him not-well.

The Patrician makes a choking, wheezing noise, eyes and mouth gaping in panic. Blood bubbles from his mouth. That fear is back in his face. Fear of death, of mortality, memento mori. You think he’d be steeled to dying, from how often he does it. But you guess he’s spawned from the ‘alpha,’ and the alpha Patrician never dies. That’s the point of the alpha.

You don't need to sit on your hands any longer, you dash from your position to behind the assassin in less than a second. You draw your sword in a millisecond. He does not have time to react. You behead him where he sits, a geyser of dark blue erupting from his neck, spraying the two other trolls nearby him as they politely scoot their chairs away. His head lands near the law students, who shriek, and kick it into the corner.

The remaining people are too horrified to run or move. The other three guards are panicked, swords drawn but not inhumanly fast enough to react like you. Serket looks bored out of her mind. All eyes are drawn to the Patrician and the curse shot into him.

Burn marks appear all over his skin. Curvy and jagged and black and orange, like the edges of a piece of paper on fire. There's no blood, no grotesque body imagery, not even the smell of sizzling flesh, just lines of red sparks eating his skin and clothes, leaving nothing but ash in their wake. They work themselves along him, quickly, and the Patrician dies when half his face and an arm are gone and there's a large hole singed in the middle of his chest.

What's left of his body vanishes in that white shadow unique to his 'retcon' abilities. There is no ash, no evidence of him after he blips out of existence. There's utter silence in the hall. The guards are drop dead horrified. A few seconds pass. Serket yawns, so loudly it’s almost a yell. She stacks her papers together, then grabs an official looking contract out from the bottom of the pile.

“Wow, finally,” she says in Common, heavily accented on the Ls and Is. “I thought he’d never leave. And stop your quivering, it was just-” she pauses to make ‘sparkle finger’ gestures. “-an illllllllusion! A trick! He’s a very good magician, the best, even! He’s fine. And now without him, I can snag acting authority and we can all get what we want! Capeesh?”

She hops around the desk with her pen and marriage contract. She hands both to the burly troll. You step away from the blue bloodbath to observe him signing away his dead guildmate. He does so without hesitation. The headless body of the fiancee sags against the table.

Serket takes the contract to the humans next, all three of whom are clutching each other for dear life. The matriarch looks at the offered contract, at Serket’s freakish grin, at the blood on the paper. The matriarch stares for a long time at the pool of blue trickling down the table across from her.

“We’ve changed our minds,” says the matriarch, voice a little shaky.

"Wait, what?" says Adviser Serket, getting closer to them and putting her hand to her ear, mockingly. "Did I understand you correctly? Come oooooooon! There’s no need to cower! I’m pro wedding! The big, bad, scary Patrician isn't even in the room!"

"We've changed our minds," she repeats, with a firmer voice.

“Oh, so some fakey fake illusion gets culled and you back down just like that?” says Serket, sounding offended. “Don’t worry about it, we’ll put Mr. Headless over there through a round in the dungeons and he’ll be morally ship shape in no time. He'll be great husband material! We’ll even throw in a free resurrection! And look at these guildmates, you can’t say no to shoutmaws like those!” 

She gestures at the two trolls like she’s showing off a prize horse. The two trolls grin. The three humans stare at her, horrified.

You are spared from having to witness Serket try to woo some freaked out human into marrying a decapitated troll who just murdered the Patrician. The door to the hallway opens, and the Patrician strides in. Roxy's released the 'real Patrician,' now the only living one, from her void.

He makes a face at the corpse when he sees it. “Okay, bleh, somebody’s going to have to tell me what happened here. Who’s taking meeting minutes?”

One of the officiators on the observation benches waves a stack of notes around over his head. “Great!” says the Patrician. He points at your coworker Maya, in the far corner. “Maya, could you get the assassin to the proper holding area for resurrection? And Dirk, could you please escort my Adviser somewhere where she can get all that blood off her?”

“Yes, sir,” you say. There’s barely any blood on her. He wants her out of the room. You watch Serket run through a couple calculations and apparently decides following orders has the best outcome. He’s her boss too, in the end. 

You follow her out of the assembly hall, as the Patrician goes to offer some comforting words to the three humans. You have no doubt he’ll manage to talk them down, give them something nice to offer in reconciliation, offer apologies, be charitable and sympathetic and nice. He’s good at that.

Adviser Serket stops dead in the hallway as soon as the door shuts behind her. “What’s your name, kid?”

“Clerk Strider.”

“Well, Strider, hate to break it to you, but we’re going nowhere.”

“I’m under orders.”

“And I’m under stress, bulgewad!” She pokes you in the chest. “But I get it, you have to do your job. So let’s pretend all that hemofluid got me freaked, and I need a couple minutes to calm down in the hallway before you do your escort duty, okay? Or is that against your orders too?”

You think about fighting her on it, but decide that standing here and fighting about it would have the same outcome as just standing here and waiting around. “I suppose it’s not.”

“See, you’re logical. You’re smart. We wait here for John.”

You do. You lean against the wall of the hallway with Serket and watch Maya drag a corpse out, his head tied to her belt by his ponytail. You watch the law students and the officiators leave, then a guard escorting the two trolls, and another escorting the now-calm human family. And finally, the Patrician. He’s whistling, hands in his pockets, and pretends to ignore his Adviser. He gives you a wave.

You stay leaning against the hallway wall as Serket steps into his path. He gives her a patient, bemused look as she plants her hands on her hips and glares up at him. “Please, John, _please_ explain to me how the hell you got them to back out of the marriage that, may I remind you, I _really_ wanted to happen. Because that was alarmingly good for you! I’m at a loss as to how you pulled it off! Truly!”

"Come on, Vriska, it’s simple," he says, smiling. "What kind of human would marry a murderer?" 

Serket rolls her eyes. She says something in Alternian, dryly. She folds her arms, gestures over her shoulder, like she doesn’t care. Talks for a while with harsh, sharp words you don't understand. The Patrician responds as soon as she’s finished, leaning forward and looking excited like he’s teaching her a new skill.

“No, that’s not true! Even if you’re going through dire financial straits, even if you’re getting blackmailed, if you love your family then you’re not going to make them marry somebody who’s clearly up to no good! Witnessing a future fiancee literally assassinate somebody is going to swear you off marriage forever.”

She begins saying something in Alternian again, but the Patrician interrupts her thirty seconds into her rant. “Shhhhhhhh,” he says, putting a finger to her lips. She swats it away before he can touch her. “Vriska, it doesn’t matter. It’s over and done with!”

He boops her on the nose, then says, with a voice that even _sounds_ like his smile, “I wiiiiiiiin.”

You swear you hear the sound of a kettle boiling. You swear steam comes out her ears. 

He said last night that this stunt would be “hilarious,” but nothing that happened in that room fit even the loosest definition of the word funny. But you think you know what he was referring to now, now that you saw Vriska Serket get fucking owned. This scene in the hall was, you think, the end goal. Schadenfreude is a better descriptor of what he was looking for, but you feel like he doesn't have an extensive enough vocabulary for that one.

You may not know what he has planned for you, nor have you unearthed every aspect of his character yet, but you are certain of one thing. 

The Patrician is fucking batshit.


	3. Food Porn

Dinner with the Patrician. It’s fucking weird, is what it is.

You dress in a casual outfit, listening to Roxy’s assurances that it’d be a faux pas otherwise. She tells you to be a little early, so you can help with the food preparation. You aren’t as hesitant to enter his foyer this go around, and the security spells burst into white swirls when the door unlocks for you immediately. He was expecting you.

A different hallway is lit with lanterns this time. You’d know which one head down even without the guided lights, there’s a scent wafting from that way that smells like something you haven’t had in a long, long time: a home cooked meal. It pulls you in like a rope around your neck.

It leads to a small… what you might call a sitting room. There’s a two person bistro table in the corner, an heirloom cabinet filled with china and glasses, a lit fireplace with painted hood, some armchairs for relaxing, a couple doors to who knows where. There’s a chess board in a glass case in one corner, an odd feature. Not a lot of people play chess for fun (besides you). It’s more of a game you play with Death.

One of the doors is propped open to a kitchen, one you’d picture belonging in a lower middle class flat as opposed to in the personal quarters of the leader of the entire human empire. It’s set up with two counters facing each other, cabinets and an old oven and a sink with a big iron water pump crammed into a narrow hall-shaped room. The Patrician is cooking inside. You tap your knuckles on the edge of the kitchen’s doorframe, to announce your presence.

He’s got two alchemic flames set up for cooking, at high heat. There’s a pot he’s boiling potatoes in. There is also a large, iron frying pan which is filled to the brim and bubbling with tomatoes and a wild variety of fish and herbs. The pan is giving off a scent that reminds you of Home. Not necessarily _your_ home, it just smells like the concept of belonging, like savory safety and mouth watering comfort, Home with a capital H. What a thing, to pack into a soup.

He's slicing open sea urchins. He slides a razor down the craggy black skin, dumps out the liquidy innards into a waste bowl, digs out orange roe with his fingers, and puts it in a glass dish. You've never had urchins. You're not even sure you've had any of the other seafood in the frying pan.

"Hi Dirk! You're a little early, buddy. It is no problem though, I could use some extra hands!" he says, smiling. He waves his roe-coated fingers around, there's some shitty white magic sparkles, and the blue flame under the frying pan is snuffed. "You wouldn't happen to have any skills in the kitchen, would you?"

"Not really."

He folds his mouth to the side. He tosses the empty shell of the urchin into the waste bowl, then casts a spell to levitate the fish out of the frying pan. They hang midair, dripping broth and tomato. "Okay, no problem. How about… Toasting some bread? There's some in the breadbox over there, you could do that."

Because you're a smarmy bastard, you say, "Is that an order, sir?"

He laughs. He levitates the fish over to a clean, empty plate, and flops them down on it. "Aw, not really. But if you start asking stuff like that, then I might have to force you! Slicing bread! Toasting it! Whoa! Who knows what other devious things I could order you to do."

Plenty of things. That's a horribly intriguing thing to think about so you box that concept off somewhere in your mind. Some dark corner of it. Probably the same dark corner that contains unauthorized imaginary nudie pictures of some coworkers of yours and statues of chiseled centaurs your brain crafted when you weren't looking. Instead you say, "Just laying my cards on the table, I might fuck that one up too. I can't pour milk on my cereal without making it taste like dead fish, somehow."

"Really? That's a surprise," he says. You find the box on the corner of the counter, open it up. "I thought you were the type of guy who's good at _everything_."

You're just slightly above average at everything, only truly exceeding in a very select category of skillset, but like hell you're telling your boss that. "I'm good at things I care about, generally," you say.

There's a couple loaves of bread inside the box. You pick a crusty-looking, pleasantly shaped round one, genetically engineered for soup-dipping. You pull out a built in cutting board from the drawers underneath. You examine the block of knives to the side of the box. Is the bread knife the zig-zaggy one? You're pretty sure it's the zig-zaggy one.

"So you don't care about food?" he says. You hear him throw something in the broth, the sea urchin roe, probably. He stirs it in, a metal spoon clanking against the pan. Home suddenly smells like a cold day on the coast with a blanket, hot new age tea, and a burly sailor mom serving up some fresh fried fish for you, family recipe style.

"Not really on the list of things most important to Dirk Strider," you say.

"Well," says the Patrician, and you can hear the smile in his voice. "You must never have eaten very good food, then."

Can't argue with that. Your two food groups are 'protein' and 'pre-packaged military rations.'

You might be piss-poor at cooking, but you're great at cutting. You chop that bread like it's never been chopped before. You're certain that there has never been slices of bread more evenly proportioned in the history of time. This toast is going to be damn tasty when you're done with it.

You have to figure out how to actually bake some crispy goodness in there. You look around for an alchemic toasting device, but don't see one. The oven isn't lit, either. You think about casting a minor fire spell and just blowtorching the damn things, but that'd be gauche. You hear the Patrician step to the sink, to wash his hands.

"There’s a frying pan in the cabinet to your left, and some butter in the dish over there," he says, cheerfully, running the water pump with his wind magic. "We're almost done, I'm just going to make the rouille really quick."

You grab the required utensils, stand there like an idiot for ten seconds wondering if you’re supposed to butter the bread before putting it on the frying pan or if you melt the butter in the frying pan and then put the bread on it, and decide the latter is more logical. You cast a flame spell in the stove and heat up the pan, melt the butter, and place the slices of bread on the surface. 

You stare at the tomato-fish broth in the other frying pan. Looks all hells of nutritious. It smells very, very good this close. It's enough to make your stomach rumble, which is a thing your stomach literally never does, since it's as obnoxiously stoic as the rest of your person.

Making toast doesn’t require much brainpower, so you get distracted. You watch the Patrician make some kind of egg spread at the counter behind you. His back is facing you, so you get to watch those shoulder blades piston out like a goddamn machine as he cooks. He’s not doing it manually, it’s all with wind magic. An egg cracks against the counter. Some herbs sort themselves out into batches and fall into a mortar. A small glass bowl flies out from the cupboards and hovers around his right shoulder. You watch his hands glide along the lines of spells, like he's conducting an orchestra. He curls in his fingers here and there, flicks his arms out with the precision of a dancer, with the graceful chaos of a falling leaf. It’s goddamn poetry. He’s writing sonnets for dinner.

You turn the pieces of toast over. Perfectly browned. Toast master: Dirk Strider. Can cook one thing on a frying pan.

He insists on plating the bouillabaisse for you. He’s not careful about the actual appearance, just the order the various accoutrements go in your bowl. It looks like a cannister of deep red slop with some suspicious chunks of white meat and potato floating in it. You’d turn your nose up at it if it weren’t for the smell. Home. Gods. You bet it’s going to _taste_ like nostalgia, despite your country bumpkin ass never venturing near the coast at nostalgia-forming age. 

He hangs his apron on a hook, grabs his own bowl and the plate of sliced bread, and leads you out of the kitchen. He shuffles you to the bistro table in the sitting room, and lets you sit down first. You pick the chair furthest away, set down your food and silverware, and settle in to dine with the Patrician.

Instead of sitting across from you, like a normal fucking person, he literally moves the chair so he can sit adjacent to you, to your right. His stupid large legs bump into yours. What the hell is this. People on _dates_ don’t even do this, unless they’re buried up to their neck in clinginess issues (a la, you at sixteen). Is this some kind of powerplay?

You shift away an inch or so, and he immediately shifts to match the distance, making your knees touch again. Definitely a powerplay. It's a two for one combo of brilliant and bizarre. You can imagine how terrifying it might be for some important visitor to knock knees with a king possessing a horrifying bouquet of powers, one of which probably includes the ability to punch their head off their shoulders. He must be doing it out of habit with you, since there's nothing to prove. Probably.

Anyway, here you are, bumping knees with the Patrician, basically playing footsie. Fuck this guy. No, really.

The Patrician looks pleased as punch with himself, scanning the bouillabaisse like it’s the climax of a favorite book. He grins at you, his glasses fog up in the steam of the soup as he leans over it. “Thanks for coming. Dig in! I really hope you like it.”

The taste overwhelms you, on that first spoonful. It’s like eating the divine avatar of umami. White fish fried and boiled until it melts in your mouth. Hardy broth so rich it feels like cream. Vegetables smooth and infused with complementary, warm flavors. You slather a slice of toast with the yellow, garlic-drenched rouille and dip, scoop up some of that broth with the sea urchin roe melted into it. You don’t know how it’s supposed to taste, but you’re certain this is cooked to the height of its power.

The whole dish is a masterpiece. So perfect it belongs in a museum. It’s a crime it’s in a private collection. A fleeting piece of art, a painting drawn in sand.

You try to make a quick estimation of how much these ingredients cost. The vegetables look plebeian enough. The herbs you aren’t sure on. The seafood… the city’s on a river, the palace is a couple miles away from the ocean delta and dock district, but still. Urchins with roe, that kind of bourgeoisie indulgence must have at least a couple dollar signs attached to it.

The Patrician leans on his elbow, against the table, and watches you eat with a spaced-out smile. He absentmindedly takes a bite of his bread.

“Good job on the… toast,” he says, mouth full.

You give him a very deadpan look. “It’s my masterwork.”

He laughs. You feel like you should say something in return, but complements always make you feel awkward. You don’t get the chance to try to piece one together— he flings his chair back and stands up in a rush. “Oh, sorry, I forgot something important! Hold on.”

You watch him bound over to the heirloom cabinet. The polite thing to do would be to stop eating while he’s up from the table, but dear gods, it’s so good. You can’t stop. You shovel your face full of mystery fish that tastes like heaven incarnate.

He comes back with two chardonnay glasses balanced in one hand and a bottle of red wine, which is a topic you know far too much about. Just for the pretentiousness factor. You can bullshit ‘the hints of rose and chocolate’ with the best of them, and you might even believe what you’re saying. You do know red wine doesn’t go with fish. This _pleb_.

You also know that’s an expensive import when you read the label as he pours it for you (strangely, as he’s crisscrossing the glasses in one hand to do so). Your vague estimation of meal price skyrockets tenfold. He sets a glass in the appropriate place setting in front of you, then sits back down to continue eating. Your knees bump into his again, you don’t try moving them away.

You take a sip of the wine. He actually picked a good one, it’s lighter bodied and sweet, like a white wine. Good choice, the notes of… wine… go well with the savory, mixed flavors of the soup. This is something you know how to compliment.

“The notes of cherry go really well with the fish, Patrician.”

He looks elated. “Really!? I just picked some random old bottle.”

You can feel your lip curling up past your teeth, and there is nothing you can do about it.

“The look on your face is _so good_ right now,” he says, laughing. “But, nah, I’m just messing with you. I had to take a dumb wine education class way back in the day. It kind of works, I guess? I think it’s mostly hot air but I go along with it anyway, because why not.”

You take a much deeper sip of your wine before asking, “Classes, huh. Is that how you learned to cook?”

“No, cooking is kind of a hobby of mine,” he says. He blows on a spoonful of potato and broth to cool it down. “My dad taught me how.”

You’ve caught glimpses of his dad, here and there. He’s not around the palace a whole lot, choosing to involve himself in spheres of activism around the Earthen kingdom. Roxy calls the Patrician’s father ‘a fine piece of ass.’ You don’t agree with her, because you’re not into men older than fifty, and even that’s a reach, good fuckin’ gods, Rox’. 

The Patrician’s father is miraculously still alive and separate from the royal family conglomerate, having avoided marrying the previous Patrician and taking a hardline stance against her policies. You don’t know why he went to such extremes, her policies were harsh but they weren’t evil. You personally liked most of her policies, she was brutal in the best ways. Patrician Crocker got shit _done_.

You prod a little. “Didn’t your mother cook too, sir?”

The Patrician blinks, like he just remembered something important. “Oh, no, I don’t think she did,” he says, and smiles in a not quite genuine way. “She baked.”

You prod a little more. “Do you bake?”

“No, I don’t like cakes and desserts all that much.” His fake smile falters a bit. “Can we not talk about my mom during dinner?”

You want to know what would happen if you kept prodding. But you don’t know what direction to poke in. So instead you say, “Yes, sir.”

The Patrician snaps out of it, his emotions become real again. He leans towards you even more, and with a concerned voice says, “Hey, um, you know you can call me John in private situations, right? I mean, ‘sir’ and ‘Patrician’ are fine when we’ve got to act all serious and leaderly and whatever, but if it’s just you and me, or you and me and some other friends… I, um, don’t really like that title used on me.”

“I’m not comfortable with that.”

The Patrician pouts. “Fine.”

You’re saved from further argument about his name when you hear a small ‘ping’ and a technomancy dock pops up in front of the Patrician’s face. It’s an overly complex time piece and text parsing system, neon blue clocks and random digits and words floating transparent a foot away from his glasses. You have an interest in technomancy, so you feel the snobbish part of your brain wrinkle its nose at the amateur dock setup. It’s not efficient in the least. He’s clearly a fucking casual.

The view of the dock is sideways and reversed from where you are, but you manage to read the alert text. It must be part of the door alarm. It says:

VRISKA SERKET  
HERE FOR: BUSINESS

The Patrician rolls his eyes. “Sorry, I have to take this.” He twirls his finger around and the dock rearranges to a cartoon icon of an ear. He says, “Hi Vriska, I’m having dinner with a friend right now. Can it wait an hour?”

She spitfires something in Alternian back at him. The ear icon pulses with audio as it transfers her voice. His eyes widen. “Oh, dang, that’s a _great_ idea!” He turns to you, looks apologetic. “Sorry, this won’t take very long, Dirk, I just have to make some snap decision with her about some sneaky back door stuff she’s doing.”

You nod. You’re almost done with your soup, anyway. You want to know what ‘sneaky back door stuff’ Adviser Serket is up to, but you’d have to learn another language for that.

He doesn't let her in, Serket just uses the door intercom to communicate. She starts ranting in Alternian at him, the Patrician listens with a wide-eyed look. You lean back in your chair and sip at the rest of your wine.

The Patrician replies with a couple things in Alternian, in a hushed tone. So it’s something you shouldn’t know, then. You can basically hear Adviser Serket’s grin over the intercom when he responds. She says a chipper goodbye, and the dock disappears. 

You don’t ask what that was about, since he wouldn’t tell you anyway. He gets back to eating, like nothing interrupted him.

“Hey,” he says, sudden. “Kind of random, but would you mind accompanying me out for an errand at the market tomorrow? It’ll be before your weird regular bath time hours, so don’t worry about that. It’s for security, and I want you specifically.”

You have the day off, and you have plans. “Is that an order, sir?”

He blinks at you. “No, but I’d _like_ you to come with me. Are you busy already?”

You hesitate. “I’m… eating lunch with the Heir.”

He grins real wide. “That’s great! I won’t usurp your pal date, the shopping trip will be in the morning. Are you and Jane going out to eat somewhere fun?”

You shrug. “I think she’s too busy with actual responsibilities to plan that far ahead. I have some ideas, but we’ll probably end up winging it.”

“I could treat you two… if you come with me? We can pick up some good takeout for you and Jane, how about it?” he says, leaning towards you, waiting for your answer. You don’t feel particularly inconvenienced by the request, but even if you did, you’d have to say yes. You can’t not say yes to the Patrician.

“Alright,” you say.

He smiles. He gives you the time and meeting spot for the start of your apparent security escort. When you ask if he thinks there’s going to be a concern, he shrugs it off. You hypothesize this is related to your soulwalking talent and try to steer the conversation towards finding out, but the Patrician is possibly the cagiest person you’ve ever met. The man’s an expert at dodging questions and redirecting. He reminds you of your ex-boyfriend in that way, not answering straight either through sheer obliviousness or the desire to remain private, and often the two are overlapped. Must be a familial trait. Although Jake’s more obvious about it.

When you leave his foyer, despite getting no answers whatsoever, you feel… content. You think it’s the food in your stomach, the very slight buzz from the two glasses of wine you had. Still. It’s rare for you to be satisfied with something that isn’t related to information or planning or some other elaborate Rube Goldberg mind mechanic going well. Therefore, the contentedness is unsettling.

Perhaps the soup had some charm on it.


	4. Whole Foods

You have your own room. You didn’t use to. You were in the four-bunk-per-room dorms with the rest of the normal guards and police, but you kept hogging the bathroom and complaints were filed and, voila, your own bed and bathtub. It’s small, just a bed, desk, closet, tiny fireplace, and chair, with an adjacent room with all the standard bathroom equipment that barely manges to fit in there. But the bathtub’s big enough to stretch your legs out in, which is all you care about. 

There’s plenty of space for decorating. You have some posters of (horse-themed) plays you like tacked up on the walls, tens of pages of poems Rose mailed to you pinned up above the desk (plus one fledgling-Common poem from Roxy), a couple superb drawings from Dave over your bed, an icebox for your shitty katanas in the corner, a rack for your Unbreakable Katana on the wall, fancy old man wizard figures stacked in your closet for shits and giggles, and an uncomfortable amount of porn shoved under your bed. You chose porn storage over puppet storage. Due to lack of space, you unfortunately had to entrust your elite puppet collection to Dave as a temporary measure. You hope he hasn’t burnt them in a fit of panic.

Your room’s out of the way, more towards the stables and west servants’ entrance, but that’s fine with you. Makes it easier to go into the city.

For the Patrician’s errand, you pick out your normal cold weather day outfit. It’s unusually chill this fall, foretelling a harsh winter. Or that’s what Rose tells you in letters, anyway, there’s a high chance she’s bullshitting. Shoulder length gloves, your usual type of sleeveless shirt that screams 'guns out, ready for anything,' leather pants for that buckled fantasy character look, and your knee high lace up boots. You also wear a special traveling cloak that has four long slits cut into it, to allow you to grab your sword from any angle you so choose.

You decide to take your Unbreakable Katana with you today. You don't want your other shitty swords shattering on you if something happens and you're trapped in town without a blacksmith. You strap the sword at your waist, so most of it's masked by your cloak. 

You rendezvous with the Patrician near the red brick service entrance, in the steamy and bustling laundry area. He leans against the wall, finagling with his shitty tecnomancy dock. He wears navy blue breeches, a white shirt, and a baby blue cool-weather traveling cloak, drawn together by a silver clasp engraved with his personal royal seal. The only items of Patrician-black on him are riding boots and a pair of fine, tight, form fitting leather gloves. The kind of gloves that are best pictured firmly gripping the bare skin of your lower back. Choice fuckin’ leather.

The dock vanishes when he sees you, and he gives you a once-over. “I said dress normal.”

You look down at yourself. “This is normal.”

The Patrician gives you a look like you had just revealed to him you were actually a lizard person from the moon trying to take over the empire. He snort-laughs a second later. You feel your face heat up. 

“Fingerless gloves are _cool_ , sir,” you say, trying to sound calm. “And don’t throw stones in glass palaces. You’re going to stick out like the celebrity you are. I don’t think preventing swarms of anonymous strangers from asking for your autograph is part of my professional repertoire.”

“I’m rewriting your job description just so you have to do that now,” he says. “Exclusive autograph prevention guy, Dirk Strider. Could you think up a snappy title for your new position?”

“The Signature Baron,” you say.

“Oh,” says the Patrician, a devious grin spreading across his face. “Oh, that’s really good.”

You venture down into the city proper, through the servants entrance. The servants don’t seem to care the Patrician is walking through easily the dirtiest part of the complex, many of them stop to say a genuinely appreciative hello to the two of you. A narrow cobblestone road winding through royal service buildings widens out as you spiral down the bridge, as you approach the mainland, the area where citizens and carriages and farm animals and horses clop about. The market isn’t too far away, and you find yourself in the midst of a crowd in no time. ‘In the midst’ is relative, of course, there’s always a ten foot space clear around the both of you. Everyone immediately knows who he is and avoids the fuck out of him.

No one asks him for autographs, but people talk. They whisper. Those around you have a hard time averting their eyes from him, standing in doorways and gossiping to each other about the Patrician. He doesn’t seem bothered by this, and _always_ greets anyone who nods or says hello or throws a nervous compliment at him. You observe as you walk, organizing all the reactions, figuring out a pattern.

It’s a side effect popularity, you think. An uncertain popularity, the people understand he’s kind and alarmingly charismatic and different than the previous ruler but don’t know what to do with him. His mother was popular in the 'yeah, she got it done and crime rates were zeroed out due to insane punishment rates' way but Patrician John Egbert is popular as a figure. He is a personable face slapped on to an incomprehensible office. He walks among the people and does not want them to fear him whatsoever. 

You think that’s a naive thing to want.

The first thing you do is stop for breakfast near the main Death temple. It’s a massive, gray stone building magically constructed so its curling, vine-like spires tower over the rest of the city (sans the palace on the bridge). One spire is inlaid with green gems, the other with red, for the Lady and Lord of Death, respectively. The door of it is open, even in this cold weather, waiting for those willing to play a Death Game for the resurrection of various corpses. You’ve only been inside it once. Your ex-boyfriend got initiated as an apprentice here, against his will.

The Patrican buys you a milk tea with cheese and mutton dumplings. You sit on the stone steps of the church and eat it out of cheap bowls. It’s a street breakfast in the fullest sense of the definition. It tastes good, but you seriously don’t want to know what went into it. You can’t stop yourself from speculating. Where did they find this meat, in the city dump? Did they harvest it from the sheep-rat hybrids in the sewers?

“I took you for a gourmand,” you say, picking a mysterious string-like thing out of your bowl. “This is-”

“Uh, you better finish that sentence with _delicious_ or I’ll push your head into that. Cream pie style!” he says, before tilting the bowl into his mouth. A dumpling half-catches between his lips, he slurps it in.

You pause and think of a way to finish the sentence. “-n’t sea urchins and fine wine.”

“Oh?” he says, teasingly. “You liked my cooking?”

You realize you neglected to complement him last night. Or even thank him. You stamp down the urge to remain a permanent member of the ‘no complements, no emotions, assholes only’ club. You struggle out something. “’Like’ doesn’t really encompass how I felt about it.”

He frowns, thinking. “Soooooooo, does that mean you loved it or hated it?”

It takes a huge amount of brainpower to say the words, “It was very good, sir.”

“Then come again a couple nights from now,” he says. “Tonight and tomorrow I’ve got dinner plans already, but after that? I’m planning on buying enough ingredients for two.”

You agree to his invitation. You can’t pass up another meal like that. The Patrician cocks an eyebrow and beams at you. If you were a weaker man, you would swoon right there on the church steps. You tip the bowl back to cover your face and stare deep into a floating chunk of melty cheese.

You return the bowls and duck into an alley of tightly packed market stalls, where people cannot afford giving him a ten foot radius. Watching people accidentally bump into him, look panicked for a hot second, then relax when he just says hello… is certainly a sight. You watch all of them for intent, of course, you can never know if one of these innocent bystanders has a knife up their sleeve.

You watch him finagle and shop and try desperately to act like the common man. He purchases thick, meaty calf’s liver, apples, tomatoes, carrots, asparagus, excess chicken carcasses for cheap. Puts them in cloth bags he brought along, organizes his groceries in them like a normal person. He buys some wrapped up meatball bánh mì for you and Jane. He says she’s a fan of the bread and it’s one of her favorites. You don’t have enough information to think otherwise.

There’s been this thought in the back of your mind this whole time. Why the fuck is he bothering with _grocery shopping_ when he could have a random peon do it for him. It’s when the saleswoman lingers a little too long after a handshake. It hits you like a fucking carriage.

He _could_ have some servant do these menial errands for him. But he’s doing it himself. Why? Because PR, is why.

It’s too soon for many of the populace to chill out around him. Too soon to the ascension of Heir John Egbert to the Patrician Betty Crocker’s vacant throne. Too many memories of what the Patrician used to be. But damn, is he trying to speed things along. He’s putting his all into it. He greets everyone paying attention. He knows a surprising amount of them by name. He pays for everything with dirty, common coins and barters with shopkeepers to try and get them to set a price for the Patrician, instead of giving the goods away for free.

You realize that Patrician Egbert is trying his damnedest to wipe away the legacy his mother left him. It should have been obvious, you’re not sure why you didn’t come to that conclusion earlier. That’s why he rarely acts in line with the standard decorum, why he didn’t want to be called ‘Patrician.’ You don’t know if he consciously decided to do this or if it’s a side effect of his inborn personality. Perhaps a bit of both.

You watch him scan wooden racks of a kitschy tourist stall for a pair of earrings. None of them match the big button shaped ones he exclusively wears. He buys some campy pink cat ones. Alright then.

“Ah, hey, I should ask,” he says, turning to you. “Do you need to pick up anything while we’re here?”

“No.”

He frowns. “Really? You don’t have any hobbies that require supplies or anything? What are your hobbies, anyway?”

“Art, technomancy, fighting, sewing, horses-" you list off.

"What, like, riding horses?"

"No. Just… Horses."

The Patrician makes a face like he’s _fucking delighted_ by this. You don’t get to hear whatever inane joke he’s going to make about you, because an assailant leaps down onto him from the nearest building’s roof.

Or well, the assailant _would_ be leaping onto him if it weren’t for the fact you’re too fucking awesome to function. You’re not limited by the Patrician’s penchant for ‘jokes’ this time. Your katana is unsheathed as soon as you hear the lifting of feet from the shingles above you.

She’s hurling herself chest first at the Patrician. It’s some troll girl with a mask over her face and horns that look like a bull’s. She’s screeching in Alternian, holding two knives, and wearing the tyrian-red-gold colors of Roxy’s old flame: Queen Killer, The Renounced Empress, Meenah Peixes. This assassin’s employer was a jerk to Roxy. She’s fucking dead.

You slide towards the Patrician, katana up to break her fall. Her knives hit your blade as you block them from sinking straight into his shoulders. You fuck up her momentum real bad, and her body goes careening into yours, legs first. You catch her and hurl her to the ground. You jump onto her upper arms, in case she tries to use her hands to cast a spell. She screams. You press the blade of your katana into her neck, enough to pierce her thick troll skin and make her bleed teal. She shuts up beautifully.

“Oh, uh, ha ha. I guess she played it straight…” says the Patrician, from behind you. He sounds oddly disappointed.

Who played it straight. You lock that piece of information away to over-analyze later, when you don’t have to focus on keeping someone incapacitated. You watch the troll underneath you pant and swear. “Sir. Do you want me to kill her?” 

“Nah, I got it.”

He casts some kind of spell you’ve never seen before, an Egbert original. Ropes of light blue magic crackle into existence underneath her back, wrap around her like constricting snakes. You step off her when the ropes work their way around her arms and bind her hands together, making her unable to cast spells. The magic ropes become an opaque, solid white when the spell runs its course. It’s a well crafted piece of magic. You try not to think of when and where he practices that. Might get the vapors. 

He shoos you away from the writhing troll, who is still spitting insults in a language you don’t understand. He says something back to her in Alternian, then makes a clenching motion with his hand. She makes a choking, wheezing noise, her chest heaving with a sudden and harsh effort. He took her breath away, apparently. Not enough to kill, but enough to shut her up. There’s gasps from the audience.

The Patrician smiles at the crowd who gathered to stop and gawk at the spectacle. He manages to come off as —you think the phrase is ‘charmingly adorkable’— in the ensuing “Everything is fine here, guys! Nobody hurt, right?” speech. There’s even a couple laughs amongst the people. You pick up the troll and heft her over your shoulder while he placates the crowd. You figure you’ll be doing the heavy lifting. And she doesn’t have enough air to fight back, anyway. She hangs bent across your torso, her legs kicking limply against your ass and her head occasionally thwacking against your thigh.

The Patrician disperses the crowd and leads the way back up to the palace. He has shopping bags filled with foodstuffs slung over his shoulder, you have a barely-breathing person. What a trip.

He peers down at you, around the troll on your shoulder, looking apologetic. “I’m sorry, I guess I didn’t need you-specifically after all! I was wrong about… well, I thought something else would happen. I’m really sorry for stealing your morning off! Did you at least have fun?”

“Sure,” you say, not considering grocery shopping all that fun. You shift the troll to your other shoulder so you can talk to him. “Why did you request me specifically, sir. Did you expect a scenario where my soulwalking would be used?”

He shrugs, a grin splitting his face. “Who knows! It’s a surprise!”

The word ‘surprise’ echos in your head. Like he shouted it into a cave. You come to a horrible realization.

You know why he’s telling you that.

It's only a "surprise" because _he doesn't know what he's going to use you for_. He might have a general idea— perhaps 'I need a soulwalker for a possible necromancer threat,' but the actual logistics will be as much of a surprise to him as it will be to you.

You'd facepalm if you weren't carrying an asphyxiated troll. This kind of pisses you off, actually. Plans should be well crafted things, with a wild amount of variables and backups and equations, not something you just… throw resources at on the fly and hope it works. This fuck. This moron. How the hell does he run a whole country. How does he even run a _city_.

Rhetorical questions, of course. Asked to yourself only in anger. You know exactly how he does it: he's god-tier good at amassing trusted allies, reading peoples' intent, understanding who they are, and adapting to situations. If he's not good at something in particular (taxes, war strategy, laws) he delegates it to someone else who succeeds at it (Jane, Vriska, various council members).

Awareness of his sensibilities doesn't make you feel any better. You cannot believe you fell for his stupid ‘it's a surprise’ shtick, although he wasn't actually tricking or lying to you. You just ran face first into a conclusion and buried your head into it. As per Dirk Strider tradition.

Angry, you ask a blunt question. “I have to ask, how do you have time to do this? Don’t you have more important responsibilities than eating healthy and getting assassinated?”

He blinks at you, surprised. “Oh, I’m having another John sit in on some boring grain rationing meeting. Don’t worry, I’m the real one, the grain-John is taking one for the team.”

You seriously want to live on the plane of existence this guy is on. Must be lovely up there.


	5. Something is Rotten in the State of Denmark

Jane knocks on your room’s door five minutes after you come back, after you finish filing all the paperwork for the mysterious assassin from the Renounced Empire. You thought you were meeting her in the palace library. By the look on her face when you open your door for her, you see plans have changed.

Jane Crocker. First cousin of the Patrician. Due to the lack of children spawned from Patrician Egbert’s loins, she also happens to be next in line to his office. On top of that, she’s a successful business mogul, expert baker, and a friend of yours ever since you dumped her half-brother Jake nine years ago. One of the upsides of moving to the palace is that you get to spend more time with her, although not too much more. She’s busy as hell.

“Is your room bugged?” she asks, impatiently.

“Hello to you too, Jane,” you say, letting her in. You shut the door behind her, then spread your fingers out towards the back wall. You think of the spell for visibility, the words in a whisper on your tongue, the motions in your fingertips, and you cast the magic to show that no, your room is not fucking bugged. What kind of porn smuggling tinfoil hat privacy nut does she take you for? A mere casual, apparently.

The room alights with spiderweb lines of orange, strung over the floor, walls, ceiling, every available surface. White pulses of magic travel through the circuits as they monitor for breaches in your silence spells, or breaches in your security. Jane looks around, satisfied, and you twirl your pointer finger to hide them from the naked eye again. She sits down on your bed, places her bag on the floor, and bites her lip with the gapped front teeth she shares with the rest of her family. 

“I’m terribly sorry for bursting in like this,” she says. “But I’ve just had a straw break the camel’s back, so to speak. I need you to help with something. Something volatile.”

You pull up your desk chair near her, sit on it in reverse so your legs straddle the back of it. “And I’m going to guess whatever’s in that bag is a bribe for me to stamp down said volatile situation?”

“Some cakes I made. Only the finest of bribes for the finest of men,” she teases, but her heart’s not into it. “But I’m not sure sweets are enough to tempt you, Mr. Strider. Can I trust you to help me?”

“Always, Jane.”

“Even if it doesn’t necessarily align with your employer’s wishes?”

You hesitate. If it were something that required you directly to disobey orders, or to lie under oath, you don’t think you could do it. Not unless there was an extremely good reason for it. But you trust her. “You can at least tell me what you want help with. I’ll keep it under wraps. Unless you’re trying to usurp him or some equivalently unscrupulous shit.”

“Not that, never that,” she says, and she looks away from you. She sighs, then leans forward, pressing her steepled hands to her lips. “… Today there was an assassination attempt on the Patrician.”

“Yeah, I was there.”

“Were you? Gosh, I need to brush up on my sources of information.” She sits up straight and does a really bad impression of a generic pompous noble. “‘Hoo hoo, let’s keep Jane out of the spy and intrigue sector of things, she’s got a mind for _business._ ’ Those old fuddie duddies can bite me, I’m learning the ropes now.”

Jane’s terrible at intrigue, much as she thinks she isn’t. You know that, despite being in line for the throne, Jane was not educated quite like the Patrician was. John, Jane, Jake, and royal family black sheep Jade are worlds apart in their talents. John got the people skills, Jane got the economics, Jade got the war tactics, and Jake got… uh… jury’s still out on that one. You can’t tell if Patrician Crocker intended them to work together or specifically set up _only_ John to inherit the throne. If the latter were the case, the other three cousins/sibling would be unable to oust him even if they wanted to; the dude’s leagues above them in being able to do actual charismatic “leader” things.

You’re leaning towards Jane being specifically groomed to be unable to take office. No one ever taught her Alternian. She knows as much as you do about trolls. That’s half the job right there.

“Anyhoo,” she continues. “I have reason to believe Adviser Serket set the whole thing up. Hired a legitimate Renounced Empire troll through backdoor means. Poor thing had no idea who she was really working for.”

“That must have been what they were talking about at dinner last night. It was a setup,” you say, thinking aloud. You lean forward on your chair, out of habit. This sounds like the start of some dense, dank drama. “So what, was it some kind of public approval plot? A spectacle for the citizens? News breaks out amongst the people that the Queen Killer tried to brazenly murder the Patrician in broad daylight. The humans in favor of the Renounced Empire fall, approval of the Patrician goes up because he survives the attempt, and the Patrician presents the people with a reminder on a silver platter that —despite being kind— he’s as much a force to be reckoned with as his mother was.”

“I think you’ve cracked the case, Strider.”

She still looks upset. “I don’t see the problem, Jane. I think it’s pretty clever, actually. So what’s up?”

“Well. It’s… my cousin…” she says, clenching her hands. She jerks her head up, something close to rage etched on her face. “My cousin isn’t like this!”

You stare at her.

“You don’t know him,” she continues. “So you don’t know how much he’s changed since he took office. He always enjoyed a good prank or two or ten, who doesn’t, really, but he’s never played tricks like _this_. These kinds of tricks are just… dastardly two-facing political plots! These are tricks that could hurt people, have hurt people, if my scant ideas of what he’s been doing are correct.”

You frown. You believe her, but you don’t see what’s all that wrong with it. So what if the Patrician saves a hundred people by hurting one semi-evil one, so what if he manipulates opinion to favor himself? Shouldn’t all leaders? “So what’s changed him?” you ask. “Was it the death of Patrician Crocker?”

“No,” she says, dead serious. “I think it’s Vriska.”

You don’t really know Vriska.

The things Jane and Roxy have told you about Vriska have always sorted themselves into Column Evil, and you’ve got no evidence to argue otherwise. She once illegally purchased an army of untrained dragons to push back some Carapacian forces just for the coolness factor, and they ended up scorched-earthing everything for thirty miles. She used a one-time use magic item to stop time so she could kill all but one person in a banquet simultaneously, just to intimidate the shit out of that single guy when time resumed itself. She forced a dramatic standoff with a spider-monster that _she herself_ awakened, just so she could play the hero in front of the town it was attacking. While you can see why the Patrician appointed her as an official Adviser (an army of dragons, seriously, who thinks of that? Besides you), it’s also fucking insane. You could entertain the possibility she’s manipulating him for her own goals.

"I think… I think she’s playing with him. They’re playing horrible, horrible games. They were friends for so long, but the things they’re doing now… They’re so cruel," says Jane, biting her lip. "She hurts him, sometimes. He gets bruises, cuts, sprained limbs. Nothing horribly severe but I know they're from her. And he lies about them! But I always use my healing spells on him, because I can't not. I can't withhold that just because… because he's lying about abuse."

Strange theory.

“You think she’s abusing him. Manipulating him. And that it’s changing his behavior.”

She nods, seriously. “I do.”

You have a hard time imagining the powerhouse Patrician getting beaten to a pulp by a troll half his size and half as powerful. If Jane's right, and you're not convinced she is, there'd have to be a mental block that prevents him from fighting back. Seems unlikely, but it's not your area of expertise. You've only been an abuser, not an abusee. You were (are) kind of an ass.

You try a different angle. "Are they strifeing? Practicing for fights?"

"If they are, then why would he lie about it?"

She has a point. You go down a different path. "Where are the wounds? Neck? Wrists?"

“Everywhere. But yes, sometimes.”

“Okay. What if they’re fucking. Having crazy violent sex."

Jane makes five different faces in quick succession and none of them are flattering. She manages to struggle out, "A black eye, Dirk. I had to heal a black eye."

You don't see the problem here. "Punching people is a valid form of foreplay."

Jane makes an expression like she was suddenly hit in the head with a bat. She puts both her hands on her forehead. "No, Dirk! That's just you."

"I can think of nothing more erotic than hammerfisting someone in the eye socket.”

She shakes her head. “I can guarantee John is not into… getting hit! And even if he was, my cousin is rather… chaste. He's a horrendous flirt but never follows through."

“I still think they’re fucking.”

"And I still think it's abuse," says Jane, defiantly. "But setting our theories aside, can you do some investigating for me as to what's truly going on? Gather evidence? Help me solve the case as to what's happening with my poor cousin?"

Fuck yeah you can. Your brain is already ten steps ahead of you and operating at blistering speeds. You think aloud. "I need to learn Alternian," you say. "I need more information. I need to listen in. Figure out what she says to the Patrician, when they think I can't understand. She can't know about my knowledge, neither can the Patrician. After that, we'll see. Somebody's probably going to end up decapitated."

Jane raises an eyebrow and folds her arms. "I know you're pulling my leg with that last one, Strider."

"Maybe."

"Well, decapitation or not, hurry yourself up, young man. Get learning," she says. She hesitates, pushes up her glasses. "Please use that brilliant brain of yours to investigate this case. I… I'm very scared. I don’t believe you’ve realized it yet, but something is terribly wrong with my cousin. And right now, Vriska is my only guess as to the cause."

You’re pretty good at information gathering, and you’re even better at it when you’re a fly-on-the-wall guard. You’re pumped about what she’s asking you to do. While you would love to altruistically say, 'I'm doing this only as a favor to you, Jane, because you're dear to me,' the real reason you're going to investigate is because you want to see if you can out-clandestine both the Patrician and Adviser Serket. You're only doing this because you're horribly selfish and narcissistic. And, also, because Jane is dear to you and you would do a thousand favors for her if asked. But really, it’s mostly selfishness.

You’re not sure if you should ask. But you’re one hell of a prodder. “If it’s not Vriska, if those wounds are from sparring or something, if she and him are perfectly normal business partners, then what?”

“Then I don’t know,” she says. Her voice gets dark. “Then my theory doesn’t hold, and something else is changing him from the inside. Perhaps the weight of responsibility. The crown is a heavy burden.”

“How woefully melodramatic,” you say. “I weep.”

“Oh, shush, Strider. I rather liked the turn of phrase,” she says, smiling again. "But thank you for looking into this for me, as I have my hands tied at the moment. Let's eat lunch and gossip about the palace. You deserve some cakes.”

“Dessert first? Jane,” you scold, trying your hardest to look like an angry mother. You dig out the bánh mì from a shopping bag under your desk, hand one of them to her. She unwraps it, takes a whiff of the fresh, crispy bread like a weirdo. Of course you have friends who huff bread, of fuckin’ course.

“Ah, a favorite of mine. You certainly get on my good side,” she says. You decide not to tell her the Patrician picked it out, not after the conversation you just had. Later though, you’d feel guilty taking unwanted credit. 

Before she takes a bite, she asks the worst gossip-mongering question under the sun. “Have you said hello to my half-brother since you've taken up residence?"

You wince. She laughs. "Well, you should! Jake’s never left his basement since he’s moved here. I'm a bit worried."

“That’s his own damn fault and you know it.” It’s not his own damn fault. You are convinced you were one of the driving reasons to cause him to withdraw, back in the day. But perhaps it’s been long enough. You left scars with your mental manipulation but you don’t think you left them irreparably deep.

“Couldn’t you… you know… nudge him along?”

You unwrap the paper from your own sandwich, stare at some of the shredded carrots dangling out of the end. You’re not going to fuck up his psyche any more than you already have. “No,” you say, before taking a bite.

She begrudgingly changes the subject after that, and you talk of lighter things. What she’s been baking. Her intensive side businesses she’s running. The latest Detective Pony serial in the Times, which you both _hate_ but somehow, also, love a lot. The cakes are more like cream puffs, crispy outside and a light fluffy center that tastes faintly like cherries. It’s a bit tart, how you like it. You end up taking a second helping out of the bag.

Once you sink your teeth into your second cake, you know you've bitten into one of her pranks. Jane's face splits into a shit-eating grin. Instead of a cream-puff filling, you find something… gelatinous. Your mouth hits the thick, tongue-numbing taste of salty, unsweetened licorice. A lesser man would grimace, spit it out. Joke's on her. You're a greater man. You love this shit.

Jane's 'I pranked you!' smile collapses into a more horrifying expression when she watches you eat the whole thing without hesitation. You win this round.

She leaves when you’re finished with lunch, and you wait a couple minutes before leaving your room and heading to the library. You borrow a Common-Alternian dictionary, one with a guide to the writing system and a phonetic alphabet. It’s very thick. You know trolls often have hundreds of words for one human concept; you think the translations for the word ‘murder’ are particularly numerous.

You bring it back to your room. You draw your afternoon bath, with some salts you specifically requested from the maids. You settle into the water, open up the dictionary to the first page, put your finger on the first word in the upper left hand corner, and start memorizing.


	6. A Game At Dinner

Three days and three long afternoon soaks later and you’re on ‘B’ and know how to read the Alternian alphabet. Feeling slightly less out of your element, you attempt to seek tips from an outside source to speed up the language learning process. You stop by Roxy’s bunkroom before you see the Patrician for dinner. She’s not around. Her bunkmates say she sneaks out to town on the regular. You’ll have to quiz her about what the hell she’s doing at dinnertime. It’s definitely not babysitting. Out drinking? She’d better not be.

You resolve to find her later this week and steel yourself to have your second dinner date with the Patrician. Your goals this time consist of three things: one: get more information on the influence of Adviser Serket, two: acquire an overview of the Patrician’s mental state, three: abandon all sense of rationality and gorge your face on delicious foodstuffs.

You perform the same dinner dance as the last go-around: arrive early, casual wear, follow the glowing hallway to the same tiny kitchen. He has you cut thick, juicy slices of overripe, end-of-season tomatoes, which he sears on a pan of rendered duck fat. Cod fillets get fried in the same pan, and he has you wrap spears of asparagus with bacon and shove them in the oven. When it all comes together, the tomato slices get some crunchy bread crumbs thrown on top, and the cod plated next to it. Some kind of thick red sauce drowns it all. The asparagus and bacon are placed to the side.

He picks out a light and balanced white wine with a higher alcohol content this time. It’s from a winery you’ve never heard of, so you have no idea what level of pretentiousness you should assume pre-drink. Probably extremely pretentious. A few glasses of it doesn’t even phase you, but the Patrician gets a bit of a flush.

The cod flakes apart under the press of your fork, oozing some warm liquid that smells like wonderfully done fried fish. The tomato sauce clings to it beautifully, fitting with the fish as well and as naturally as bread and butter. The tomato slices are cooked perfectly, the crunch of the breadcrumbs and the soft feel of the vegetable work together like a matching color palette. If the last meal you had with him was top of the line home cooking made by a beefed up seafaring grandmother, this is more like a meal you’d pay out the ass for at an expensive restaurant in town. Although you suspect the restaurant would arrange the food in a more artful way, the Patrician just sort of dumped it all ungracefully on the plate. 

You resolve to actually express your gratitude this time, with the side effect of steering your conversation towards information gathering. Because you can’t ever just “be nice.”

“This is very good,” you say, staring at a piece of tomato swathed cod on your fork. Your voice drips with an unwanted sentimentality.

“Thanks!” says the Patrician, sitting eerily close to you again. He wiggles his leg, his knee rubs yours, the hair on the back of your neck stands on end.

“Do you cook like this for everybody?”

“Just my friends,” he says, then pauses. “And people I want to be friends with.”

You assume you fall into the latter category. You have no fuckin’ clue what you could possibly bring to the table in a friendship with the Patrician, but whatever. You wonder if the Venn Diagram of those two categories really does include ‘everybody,’ like Roxy said. From what you know about him, it probably does.

“What about trolls?” you ask. You pop a piece of bacon-wrapped-asparagus in your mouth. Pat on the back for you, it tastes delicious, you didn’t fuck that one up. “This food seems human-centric.”

The Patrician takes another sip of his wine. His alcohol flush is fuckin’ adorable and you want to shove your fist through your eye socket for thinking that about your boss. “I know a couple cross-species recipes,” he says. “But I don’t have as many troll friends around the palace. I pretty much only use my Alternian cookbook when Feferi comes to visit.”

You see your chance. “What about Adviser Serket? You seem like you chill with her on the regular.”

“Oh, Vriska, riiiiiiiight,” he says, like he completely forgot she existed. “No, it’s kind of a pain to eat with her. She's super careful! Makes sure there's no duplicates of me so I have to be more careful about not dying, always makes me eat first, watches me make the whoooooooole thing, blah blah blah.”

This sounds like a story. You’re fuckin’ ready. “Why.”

He seems excited to tell it. He puts his silverware down in order to gesture. “You see, a couple months ago, I was involved with making pancakes for a bunch of Alternian diplomats. They were all sort of evil and Vriska had this idea that we keep them dead for a couple of hours so they wouldn’t interfere with so-and-so political process, soooooooo… poisoned pancake breakfast it was!”

You can guarantee there was probably a better way to keep a bunch of diplomats busy than fucking killing them for a couple hours, but from what you know about Vriska, that was probably her go-to solution. However, his story was not really about cooking _for_ her, it was cooking at her request. You draw a conclusion. “I can see why she wouldn’t eat with you anymore. Let me guess: she slipped up and accidentally ate some syrupy buttery deliciousness."

“Oh, ha ha, no! She would have never fallen for that. Anyway, Vriska also had this sort of evil plan that she wanted to put into action while the diplomats were dead, and I didn’t want her to enact it, _and_ I had leftover poison. So I ended up making her delicious halibut pie. She checked it thoroughly beforehand, and it was all safe for eating! But the joke was on her," he says. He picks up his glass, and grins into his wine. "I poisoned her silverware instead."

You freeze, a forkfull of cod hanging midair between your mouth and plate. 

You’re pretty sure this disproves Jane’s abuse theory in one fell swoop, or at least adds a really weird plot twist into it. But you don’t have time to dwell on that, as you’re narcissisticly and suddenly concerned with your own well being. The irrational fear of gruesome death at the hands of the Patrician creeps up your spine, nearly gives you a tremor, before you manage to stamp it down. Get it together, Dirk. You've already eaten most of the meal and you're fine. Besides, why the fuck would he poison you. You're loyal. (But so is Vriska, isn’t she?) You shove the fish in your mouth and swallow it down.

"Clever," you say, keeping your voice steady.

"Not really. I stole the idea from a book I read. She was always really bad at identifying mystery novel murder tropes," he continues, not noticing your hesitation. "She doesn't read as much fiction as she used to… Hey, speaking of which, have you ever read-"

The Patrician smoothly changes the subject to bad serial novels, of all things, none of which are relevant to your interests. It’s so alarmingly random that it distracts you from the strange and horrifying scenario he just revealed to you, diverts your mind wholeheartedly to trash pop culture. The novels he describes are all notoriously horrendous, not even in the enjoyable ironic sense, and you’re baffled as to how his taste is so poor. He recommends a couple. You don’t react for fear of exploding into a tirade of unconstrained lecture on his bad preferences in literature. He then recommends you a god awful ninja-horse-harlequin novel you don’t think exists, you realize this fucker is trolling you, and you just about punt the table across the goddamn room.

You manage to turn the conversation onto a topic that won’t make you burst into a monologue of surreal Dirk-Strider-isms: the chess set in the glass case in the corner. You’re interested to know why he has it. He doesn’t seem the type. Chess is more associated as the game you play with Death, or a representative of Death, to win the life of your loved ones back.

Your dinner plate is clean when you say, “Do you play chess in your free time?”

“Ah, yeah, I like playing with people,” says the Patrician. “It’s always really interesting to see how my friends play! Everyone’s got their own unique style.”

“What’s your rank?” you ask.

“My… rank?” He looks lost. You don’t bother explaining. You sigh, make the brief effort of rolling your eyes even though you lack the musculature to do so, and regret asking. You bet he’s about as good as Jake (not good). One way to find out.

“Want to play?”

“Sure!” he says, standing up to grab the glass case. “Just give me a sec.”

He rearranges the room with his wind magic— the velvet arm chair is slid parallel to the fireplace, the end table floats to rest in front of said chair, and another arm chair in the corner of the room is hovered over to face its pair. You sit down when he tells you to, and he proceeds to set up the chess board on the end table in front of you. He gives you white. What a gentleman.

He sits with his legs splayed out, so his calves cross yours. You’d complain about manspreading but you, hmm, sort of enjoy the physical contact. Playing chess with the Patrician shouldn’t get your nerves tingling. You think you need to get laid. It’s been a while.

When he settles in, you’ve already decided on a strategy. Start with pawn mass forward. You move your pawn to d4.

“So,” says the Patrician, sparking up conversation. He moves his pawn to meet yours in the middle. “Do you have a girlfriend?”

What kind of _fucking_ question. You really hope your face doesn’t show your distaste. “I’m not all that interested in women,” you say, moving your knight to f3.

“Oh, really?” says the Patrician, eyes wide. His bishop goes to g4. “I _love_ women.”

You’re a bit disappointed. There go your occasional and semi-unwanted daydreams of 'Clerk Strider, I order you to satisfy me sexually.' 'Yes, sir. My pleasure, sir. Pound my ass into the floor, sir.' It was implausible before, but now it's just impossible. “Huh, really,” you say, sounding disinterested. Pawn to c4. “Exclusively?”

“Well, I have to be exclusive to the ladies. I have to produce an heir.”

John, you utter moron. The level of stupidity here has fallen down the stairs, and continuously flipped ass over heels down the spiral monstrosity, tumbling into a bottomless pit of dumb. There are so many things wrong with that statement that you don’t even know where to start, you could perform a fifteen hour autopsy on that statement and still fail to diagnose the cause of death.

“Oh, hey, your face moved,” says John, blinking at you. His knight to c6. “It’s kinda scrunched up now.”

“Pawn takes pawn,” you announce, angrily, knocking his piece over at d5 with yours. John starts laughing obnoxiously.

“I’m serious!” he says, recovering. His bishop takes your knight at f3. He plucks it off the board. “I really do need an heir. I don’t want to up and perma-die accidentally one day and force Jane to take over. I don’t want her to have to… ah…”

He’s quiet for a while. You take the time to think, move your pawn to take his bishop. He immediately moves his queen to capture your pawn at d5. He ends his sentence so late that you nearly forgot what it was finishing. “… die all the time.”

You choose not to inquire further. Crown’s a heavy burden, yeah, that overplayed trope, you’ll take their word for it.

You play in silence for a bit, each move taking more and more time as you both think on the moves your pieces could take tens of turns in the future. You realize that no, the Patrician doesn’t play like Jake whatsoever. The Patrician plays like he’s got half a brain. You note he spends a lot less time than you dwelling on his next move. It makes you a bit jealous.

“You play very well,” you say, moving a pawn to e3.

“You think I’m good?” asks the Patrician, genuinely surprised. “Really? All I do is guess! I just kind of… do the opposite of what you do, if that makes sense. If you want _really_ good, you should play with my sister sometime.”

You always thought you’d like to be friends with his half-sister. She’s a born and bred tactician.

Six moves later and you know how the game is going to go. You stare at the board. There are still 23 units left, but you're sure of it. "It's a draw."

"Huh?" says the Patrician, blinking at the board like it's in a foreign language. "It is?"

“If we play perfectly.”

The Patrician winks at you. “Well, that’s a big if. Somebody could mess up, right Dirk?”

“I believe you’re trying to call my efficacy and unheard of levels of perfection into doubt, sir,” you say, sarcastically. He just laughs, and moves his knight to capture your queen. Perfect play.

You are thankfully spared from playing until two kings are circling around each other in some kind of inane monarch vs monarch infinity game. The door to the sitting room bursts open, the fireplace flickers in some wild wind, and the two of you swivel to look at the visitor. It’s… the Patrician. Another one.

He’s freaked, like an animal frozen in fear. His eyes are bulged and wide, his Patrician’s cloak billowing around him like he was floating underwater. He takes one, gaping, open mouthed look at you before tucking all those frazzled feelings into bed and putting on his big boy face. He bites his lip, runs a hand through his hair, and his robes start hanging on him like normal clothes again.

“I, oh, jeez,” he says, embarrassed. The fireplace resumes a normal flicker. “I totally forgot I was having dinner with you tonight! I’m so sorry!”

The Patrician you’re playing chess with waves his hand dismissively. “It’s totally fine! There’s been a lot going on.”

He proceeds to switch to Alternian. You curse yourself for stopping at the letter ‘B.’ You should have pushed yourself further. At least you managed to pick up some bonus grammar. C+ for effort. “< _Anything —————————————————————— aware of?_ >”

The Patrician in the black robes rattles off an answer too fast for you to catch any words. You’ll have to improve your listening skills, perhaps script some audio spells together. But you do catch one thing. One very important thing. It’s a name, the name of the most powerful being in the world.

“< _———— Kankri Vantas ————_ >”

The Patrician you’re playing chess with frowns once the black-robed one finishes. “Okay,” he says, cautiously. “That’s kind of shitty.”

“Mhmm,” the other Patrician agrees.

“Anything else?”

“Feferi’s coming back for residency in a month or so. That’s it,” he says. He runs a very tired hand through his hair. “… Tap me out now, please.”

The Patrician you’re playing chess with holds out his hands towards his double, smiling calmly. “Sure thing.”

When that Patrician touches his hands to the other, the black-robed Patrician vanishes in a burst of white light, clothes and all. It’s more horrifying to you when he does this versus when he lets himself be killed by an extraneous party. He’s committing a weird form of murder/suicide here. Could you stare yourself dead in the eyes, reach out to yourself, and wrap your hands metaphorically around your own throat like it was nothing? Perhaps, perhaps not. It would probably depend on how much you were incessantly fucking with yourself (you would absolutely be incessantly fucking with yourself).

The interesting thing is that the ‘beta’ Patricians don’t have that fear of death plastered on their face when he kills himself. How does suicide differ from getting murdered, you wonder.

The remaining Patrician shimmers with a soft, white light, indicating he’s the only Patrician left. Apparently he trusts you enough not to have a duplicate on standby in case you snap and ruthlessly slaughter him. How flattering.

The implications of the Alpha John being the one playing chess with you as opposed to one who clearly went through something vital is… interesting. You raise an eyebrow. “I’m more important than meetings that determine the fate of the kingdom?”

“Dirk,” says the Patrician. He leans forward on his elbows, over the chess set. “You are worth remembering.”

“Well ain’t that just precious.”

The Patrician winks at you. You feel it like a gunshot. Like the meeting of his eyelashes fired off a pellet into your lungs. He changes the subject, thankfully sending no more gushy heart eyed gestures your way. “Have you ever met Feferi, by the way? I think she’d like you a lot. I’ll put you on the welcoming group.”

“Yes, sir,” you say. You haven’t formed an opinion on Her Ardent Auctoritas yet, besides for the fact her acronym looks like the exhale of a long, arduous breath. HAA. But she’s got to be better than the Condesce. There’s no way in hell she can be worse than the Condesce.

“Oh my god,” whines the Patrician. “Cut it out with the ‘sir’ stuff when we’re just chilling! It’s like, personal vs. work life, dude.”

“My job description doesn’t allow for lapses in duty,” you say, then wait the appropriately assholeish amount of time before finishing with, “… sir.”

The Patrician narrows his eyes and shakes his fist at you. You raise the corner of your mouth upwards by fifteen degrees.

You’d consider this a successful dinner.


	7. Soulwalking 101

Two days later, a couple hours before your shift starts, Roxy teleports into your room.

You’re drawing at your desk. A pencil tip-sized, pure black hole opens in your wall behind you. Your security systems go nuts, orange flickering circuitry trying to keep the hole in check. You shut them off temporarily with a wave of your hand, and the hole expands to a nice Roxy-size. You flip over the graphic smut you’re currently creating. You’re not letting anybody see this masterpiece until it’s well and finished.

Roxy pops her head out of the void, but not the rest of her. “Hey, Di Stri, we got a big ol’ fuckin’ problem downtown and I seriously need some help. You’re the best person for-”

You stop her right there. "Aren't you supposed to be on duty right now?"

She pouts. "Yeah, but I was supposed to be guarding some storage room and it was sooooo boring so I slapped some Rolal-brand locks and alarms on it and voila! I'm free to dick around in town. Anyway, I need to-"

"Okay, hold on, I don't care, you're just going to be shifty and dodge the subject if I don't ask at this moment. Where were you. Your bunkmates say you sneak out sometimes. Why the secrecy."

Roxy stares at you, deadpan, for a couple seconds, before answering with, "Speed dating."

"You lie."

"I'm sneaking out to go speed dating!"

"You're _lying._ "

She groans. "I'm trying to find a nice cougar wife, okay? One with a lot of money so I can settle down in a big ass merchant mansion with personalized pure gold sculptures of my fav wizards. It's like, the dream. Calm your tiddies, Strider."

"They're not calm, they're jiggling all over the place," you gesture at your chest. "Can't you see them rumble with annoyance?"

“Hey, fun fact of the day: in Alternian, they’re called ‘rumble spheres.’” She makes some intensive ‘come hither’ motions. “Now come on, hop in! Water’s great!"

You hop in. She holds out her hand to you, from the darkness, and you take it. She yanks you in, and you feel the weight of her void press against your body, like you’re swimming though mud. You hold onto her hand, tight, as she takes you through the smothering, pure blackness of the Space In-Between.

“There’s been a breach at the city jail,” says Roxy. Her voice sounds muffled, like she’s speaking into a pillow. “Most everybody who’s already down there is focused on keepin’ all the prisoners in line. So it’s up to us to catch the prisoner who escaped!”

“Why me,” you say, and you feel like you have to yell it for the sound to reach her. “Why not report it? Get reinforcements from the guard captain?”

“Goddess, you’re such a stickler for process! We gotta act now! Besides, I only need you,” says Roxy. “Ya see, she’s a _necromancer_. And she managed to gather a little mini-army of our pals in the non-secret police.”

You can’t help but get a bit excited. This sounds like a challenge. One tailor made for you, custom fit, in your size.

You emerge from the ground, in the square outside the city jail. When the both of you are out, the void closes up underneath your feet. Across the cobblestone square, you see the necromancer. You have to do a double take after seeing her and the soulbound corpses of your coworkers in tow. For a second, you think it’s Vriska.

“Two years!” screams the necromancer, in a nearly-perfect Common accent. “Nearly two long, boring _years_ I’ve been locked up, and for what!? So _what_ I wanted to take over the world a little bit, it was for your own good, the collective good, I-”

“Who is that and why does it look like Adviser Serket?” you say, as Roxy grabs your arm to lead you towards the necromancer.

“That’s Ms. Aranea Serket. She got locked up because she had this dumb usurpation plan or something a while back, and like, totally failed at it,” says Roxy. “Her and Vriska are cut from the same slurry-cloth, so it makes them ‘broodmates.’”

You’re sort of… vaguely aware of the troll birthing process. Something to do with caves and giant bugs and kinky semen collection bukkake fests. So her and Vriska are genetically similar, then. “I like the term ‘broodmate.’ We should use it. I think it describes you and I and Dave and Rose better than ‘cousins.’”

Roxy turns to make a pouty face at you. “Yeah, but like, that would imply we’re not a family! And we are _such_ a family!”

“We are such a family,” you confirm. You can’t deny Roxy’s pouty face. 

Aranea’s too busy scream-ranting to notice the two of you until you literally stand directly in her intended path. You both cross your arms and look intimidating. “I’m going to have to stop you right there,” you say to her. “Trying to break out in the middle of a heavily defended city? Please, Serket, I expected much more. I was under the impression your brood was supposed to be crafty.”

She brings herself and her entourage of corpses to a halt with a crackle of her blue necromancy, flitting across the cobblestones and working into your coworkers respective body parts like jagged, crawling worms. She calms down, pushes up her glasses with the hand she isn’t using to drag the ice-mage Nova around. “I admit that if I had a choice, I would have chosen a more subtle escape method, but alas! I saw my chance and took it. My plan now is to run off to an acquaintance in the Renounced Empire, and I won’t be stopped by mere amateurs in black.”

You draw your katana, crouching to fight. You get into a charging stance, as Aranea waves her hand around to channel her control across her small team.

“Hi guys!” Roxy says, waving at your very-dead coworkers. You think Nova might be alive, but only holding onto life by a thread. “Everybody relax, Dirk’s here to save the day!”

“Oh hey Roxy, hey Dirk,” says Nick, his arms moving against his will. He wields his sword two-handed, gets in a stance that mirrors yours. “Got in a bit of a pickle here… Sorry about that. _Somebody_ was reading pulp novels and let _somebody else_ get out of her necromancy limiters and construct a prison shank.”

“Oops,” says Lula, dryly, blue sparks crackling along her sword arm. She raises it into a fighting stance. “My bad. Feel free to beat the shit out of me.”

“With pleasure,” you say. You charge.

Aranea drops Nova to use both hands to channel her necromancy. She moves her arms like she’s dancing to something with a strong beat, all jagged and clenching and rhythmic. The Serket symbol flashes on Nick’s and Lula’s forhead, blue lightning sparks up and down their bodies, and they come at you with their swords drawn.

Standard issue guard swords are nothing compared to your Unbreakable Katana. You cut Nick’s sword in half as he brings it down over your head, and Lula you knock to the ground with an elbow to her stomach.

“Sorrysorrysorrysorry-” Mana shouts, as she pulls an arrow from her quiver and loads it onto her bow.

You chop Mana’s arrow midair. You trip Nick with a low kick, and lean down to use your soulwalking ability on Lula.

You are extremely intimate with how necromancy works, considering your abilities overlap. Necromancers manipulate all dead things, and the most difficult dead thing to manipulate is the human body. Necromancers have to keep everything running, all the pipes working, consciously maintain muscles and nerves and processes that are so numerous no average person could keep it all straight. To cheat at this, the necromancer will generally bind the soul of the dead into the body so the original person can keep all the boring stuff moving and the necromancer can focus on the good shit (spellcasting, fighting, etc).

So… if someone takes the soul out of the corpse, the necromancer’s pretty much screwed.

You tap your fingers to her chest, call something deep inside you, and take Lula’s soul. It's like pulling sticky taffy as you draw back your hand. Soul-gak trails down from your fingertips and forms curving strands of glowing white mucous. You use your other hand to grab the base of the stringy mass, stemming from her heart. You tug it out.

Once pulled from her body, the secretions whirl around and reform themselves. The soul condenses into a small orb, not quite solid, although you could pick and prod at it if you were feeling mad-doctor-like. It sits in the palm of your hand. Lula’s corpse doesn’t move any longer, her mouth open like a fish’s. The Serket symbol still flickers on her forehead.

Your usual convenient carrying case for souls is in your “eyes,” but you’re not lifting up your blindfold in the middle of the city. The common man doesn’t deserve that sight. You yell to Roxy, “Catch!” and pitch Lula’s soul at her. Roxy catches the white sphere with a loud whoop of joy.

“What the _fuck_ was that!?” screeches Aranea. “What the fuck _are_ you, I’ve never seen-!?” You ignore her. You chop another one of Mana’s arrows in half when you hear it coming. You kick Nick over onto his ass again with a punt to his chest. He complements you on the good hit as you repeat the soul taking process with him.

Soulwalker. You can rip the soul from a person and walk them to Death if you so choose. There's one caveat that makes the whole thing simultaneously more ethical and less useful: the soul has to 'want to go with you,' which either means they're a suicidal POS or are already dead.

It’s sort of a dumb talent to have. You’ve only used it three times. All but one of the soul-stealing occasions have been similar to this situation— evil necromancer is holding souls hostage, they’re fucking dead and therefore allowed to be manhandled by you temporarily, you stick them back in their bodies when you’re done, blah blah same old same old. 

You toss Nick’s soul at Roxy, who catches him with another loud whoop. Mana fires off another arrow, which you chop in half again. You think Aranea would stop trying the same shit over and over. You’re an arrow-proof kind of guy.

Nova finally kicks it, their shoulders going totally slack and the blood leaking from their chest slowing to a crawl. Aranea transfers everything she’s got to them, Nova’s head snapping up, their eyes lighting with Serket blue, and their hands cracking with their own light blue ice magic. 

“Oh my god,” they say, as they’re forced to stand up. “What’s happening, where am I, what the fuck is happening?”

“You’re recently deceased, kiddo! You’ve got a necromancer binding your soul,” Roxy shouts. “Don’t worry about it, Dirk’s got ya! Think freeing thoughts!”

Nova raises their arms to a spellcasting stance. They scream with surprise when Aranea fires off a massive icicle spell through them: a transparent, conical knife of ice breaking up through the cobblestones and nearly impaling you through your legs. You roll out of the way, then book it towards Nova, a trail of spiky ice tearing up the ground behind you as you run. You’re too fast to be caught by this kind of magic. You leap at Nova, palm spread, and smack them square in the chest. You continue to run forward, pulling out Nova’s soul as you go, their white strands trailing like streamers behind you. You hear Nova fall to their knees. Nova’s soul condenses into a ball, and you pop their soul in your mouth to free your hands for your katana. Their soul tastes like soap against the pocket of your cheek.

You rush to Aranea. She’s still trying to use Nova, but she’s too slow. Too unprepared. If the necromancer cannot bind the soul of the dead, they have to siphon their _own_ soul into the body in order to compensate. As a tradeoff, it means they’re less aware of what their own body is doing. Aranea knows this is one hell of a risk she’s taking. Perhaps she likes taking risks. Perhaps she considers herself as lucky as the other Serket.

The risk _of course_ doesn’t pay off, you’re too good. Luck doesn’t matter when you’re this fucking awesome. You leap at her, wielding your katana two-handed, and swing. Cutting through her neck is like slicing ripe tomatoes. Blue blood spurts like a geyser from her decapitated torso, spraying all over your outfit and hair as you land in one of those badass sword-out crouching poses. You hear Aranea’s body fall to the ground, and Mana’s shortly after. You hear Roxy cheering for you. You hear the spectators who gathered follow suit. You feel mighty pleased with the attention, like you just won a beauty pageant. You spit out Nova’s soul into the palm of your hand.

Roxy waves to the crowd, blows some kisses, and then bounces over to you. You place Nova’s soul into their body, through their open mouth, and do the same with your other two coworkers. You hope to every god that’s listening that Roxy managed to keep both of them straight, otherwise there will be some god awful Shenanigans and Hijinks if some souls wake up in the wrong body.

“Let’s bring them back to the guard captain,” you say, once everyone’s back in their appropriate corpse. “She’ll designate players to resurrect them.”

Roxy looks at the bloody scene around you. Some townspeople are starting to curiously poke at Aranea. “I’m surprised nobody’s out here already, I mean, there must be some real juicy shit going on at the palace if nobody came down to help us. Anyway, this is going to be one heckuva portal. You’re going to have to shoo everybody away while I bawl my viewglobes out.”

This is easier to do than expected. You guess people want to stay away from the blindfolded guy in Patrician-black covered in troll blood which smells like overpowering copper, and you don’t blame them. Roxy opens up the Void underneath the stacked up corpses and the two of you, and takes you direct to the guard captain’s office. The guard captain looks unsurprised as the two of you, covered in all sorts of blood and organs, land on her coffee table. Before you even start talking, the guard captain casts a spell on you to mop up the blood, which doesn’t make you feel any cleaner. You’d prefer a long, hot bath. 

The guard captain tells you that she’ll take care of the resurrections, berates Roxy for ditching the storage closet, and orders you to go talk to the Patrician about what to do with Aranea.

You ask the guard captain why there wasn’t any immediate reinforcements from the palace for the jail break, and she says most of the staff was in a high security meeting. She sums up the meeting subject in one sentence. “Kankri Vantas has gone missing.” There’s no other information currently. He could have been kidnapped, he could have run away, he could have been killed and necromanced for the umpteenth time, who knows. He simply vanished.

You’d bet your wild collection of hats you never wear that that’s what the Patrician was concerned about the other day. You wonder if he has any extra information he’s not sharing. It’s worrying, sure, but it’s not eye-bulging, suicide-committing worrying.

You catch him in the hallway, near the gardens. He’s on his way to a conference with the coin-pressers union. You ask him about what to do with Aranea. He doesn’t slow down to answer, his black cloak billowing around your waist and legs as you keep pace with him.

“Ugh, man, I don’t know…” says the Patrician, over-dramatically rubbing his temples. “She is definitely going to keep being a problem, isn’t she? Do you think I should give her to Jake?”

You get a rare chance to advise policy. When he asks if he should give her to Jake, it’s just a more politically correct way of asking, ‘should I execute her? should I make her corpse irreparable, so her soul moves on?’ 

From what Roxy said, her attempt at usurpation was fairly pathetic. You don’t think executing Aranea is warranted if she hasn’t permanently killed anyone herself. You’re a big fan of the ‘eye for an eye’ policy. “Resurrect her and move her to a higher security location,” you say. “The city jail is for petty criminals.”

“Ah yeah, you’re right,” he says, thinking. He stops walking, turns to look out the nearest window, towards the trees in the gardens. All the leaves have fallen in this area, there’s only dead branches. “She’s going to have to wait a couple months, though, the transport ship for prisoners just left and isn’t coming back for a while. In the meantime, can you push some buttons and do _something_ about Lula? That pulp novel thing is _so_ not cool.”

He could just order the guard captain to fire her, but that’d make him look unkind, and he’s clearly working hard at maintaining a very specific brand of PR. Not like you mind. You like it when he assigns you to illicit backroom jobs, because the gears in your head start turning on hyper speed with open-ended shit like this. You’ll probably make ‘another opportunity’ appear, or even scare her out of the position, or if all that fails, play ‘rearrange the schedule’ and expedite her year-end review with the guard captain. There’s a whole plethora of plans you can make.

You won’t bother him with your ideas. You never do. You promise to complete the task and take your leave. He’s a busy man.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is the point in the story where I get HYPED. Are you ready to hit the ground running? Shit just Keeps Happening after this chapter.
> 
> Also, thanks for all the thoughtful comments, everyone! I really appreciate all the feedback.


	8. Critical Miss!

He doesn’t invite you to dinner again that week. The only time you see him is at your usual morning security check-ins, where the line is drawn clearly between personal and business life and the ‘sir’ is utterly vital. Although you can’t hide the ironic tone when you say it sometimes. He flashes you a smarmy grin whenever he notices. 

You can’t help but feel disappointed at the lack of incredible edibles this week, but you quickly find out the Patrician is hosting a string of parties for PR purposes and backroom diplomacy. You stand in the corner and look threatening at a couple of miscellaneous parties, when you have nothing better to do. You manage to catch an assassination attempt on the Patrician at some point, but the guy was a pleb, a dagger hidden in a shoe, really? The Patrician probably could have offed the man himself.

The most interesting assignment you get in the next couple days is to fetch a private dossier from an exclusive part of the Archives. It’s for one of the back alley groupies the Patrician is in cahoots with. They help with the stabilization of the Alternian empire in the midst of a succession crisis: The Rogues. A lovable and criminal band of humans and trolls who assassinate and steal with only the best of intentions. They deal in “matters of the heart,” whatever that means. It means they’re riding the Patrician’s charitable policies, is what it means.

It’s the perfect night for intrigue, there’s a themed ball going on which is going to distract most of the residents of the palace. You sneak into the Archives at midnight through the bathroom, because this is a Top Secret spy thing. Not many people are allowed to know about the Patrician’s more salacious affiliations. It’s a simple mission, not many normal guards about, and you don’t need to turn any lights on to see in the dark. You’ve got a dark vision spell cast over your blindfold, lasts for two hours, and gives off a minty fresh scent if you scratch the cloth.

The dossier ends up being locked in a large wooden chest in an iron barred storage closet. Both of which are easy as pie to pick apart with a few wires and a lockpick. The chest is about the size of a coffin and twice as deep, containing a massive amount of profiles of the who’s-who of Alternian and Earthen territory. 

The person’s sheet you’re fetching seems remarkably average on all accounts. Average stats. No special abilities. She’s a politician who has a slavery ring on the side, or something. You think the Rogues want it just to make sure she can’t, like, self-destruct or void their bodies into non-existence or is in possession of some other unique ability. You fold it up and slip it into the inner breast pocket of your jacket.

The dossiers are alphabetically ordered in Common, and you thumb through them, half-curious. You get to ‘V.’ You find ‘Vantas,’ and pull the two sheets out.

The two most powerful people in the world and they have no idea what to do with their abilities. A mutant troll who can take down an entire army by himself and his rage-battery powered brother who could probably assassinate the beefed up Patrician without breaking a sweat. The only thing that saves literally the entire population of the world from them is two things: one, their shit constitution scores, and two, the both of them are so incompetent and ineffective it’s a wonder how they’ve managed to survive this long. Just kidding. You know exactly how they’ve managed to survive: Kankri’s been locked away in a mountaintop for ten years and Karkat has _a lot_ of powerful friends. Including the Patrician himself. It's existentially terrifying that the one stamped with "DANGEROUS PERSON" has gone missing.

You slide the sheets back into place. For kicks, you look up your own.

Your birthday’s in a month. You wonder how often they update these. You should break in the day after your birthday and see if they bumped the age up a year.

You’re not sure about how accurate your stats are, but you know the charisma's dead on. It's your dump stat. Who needs it, anyway? 

You look up the Patrician’s for extra kicks.

What the fuck’s even the point of having that much charisma? So you make a dumb decision because your intelligence stat is so low, and then just smile so hard and so fresh that other people trip ass over teakettle to fix your own dumb decision? That… makes a lot of sense, actually. 

You stop jamming your nose into other people’s character builds. Your Rogue contact is waiting for the dossier. She’s in one of the outdoor service alleys between the library and the gardens, two stone walls and a couple iron gates boxing you in and keeping the both of you free from spying eyes. She’s a greenblooded troll girl with thick, ear like horns. She dresses in passion-purple thief gear. Her hair is cut in a cute-ass bob. And despite Common being her second language, she makes mastercraft animal puns in professional situations and uses 'nya' in the form of a serious question. You fucking _love_ Nepeta.

“Pawnestly,” she sighs, rolling her eyes. “How long could it take? Shoulda done it meowself!”

“I got to snooping,” you say, digging out the dossier from your jacket. She snatches it from you, eagerly holding it up to the moonlight. “I wanted to get the deets on my own sweet self.”

“Oooo! I’ve done that too,” she says, folding up the dossier and tucking it into her pocket. “Can you believe my highest stat, according to ‘official sources,’ is dexterity? They’re lion’! My highest stat is constitution!”

Nepeta proceeds to do an in-place backflip, then flexes. You _fucking love_ Nepeta.

“Anyway, thanks a ton!” she continues. “This dossier was requested by the Pawtrician’s… um… what’s that word in Common again? I always forget- oh yeah! ‘Father.’ Yeah, he’s in good with us. Did you know the Pawtrician’s father can punch a hole through a stone wall a whole lawn ring thick?”

“I do know that,” you say. Roxy told you so, with hearts in her eyes. You’re pretty sure you could have also inferred it— the Patrician’s biceps are _killer._ It’s gotta be genetic.

“It’s wonderfully impressive when he does it to get you and your pals out of a jail block, gotta say. Anyway, thanks a haunch!” She lowers her voice, her eyes shifting around, over-dramatically. “*The meowbeast proceeds to stalk into the night, like an unseen predator…*”

You salute her a goodbye. Nepeta scrambles up one of the stone walls using all four of her limbs, then throws herself over the edge of it. You hear her land, then the crunching of leaves as she scampers away somewhere.

You listen to the silence of the palace. You don’t hear any unwanted visitors spying on you. You inhale the still, nighttime air, exhale, watch your breath steam moonlight-white, smell the crisp freshness of an autumn just beginning to fade. Being a Dark Clerk might not be your preferred trade, but hell, you’ve never met people this entertaining before. It’s the people that make or break a job, right?

You’re technically still on duty, but you didn’t receive instructions on what to do post mission. You decide to head back to the main complex, for the last couple hours of the ball. It’s a long walk through service alleys and cobblestone roads, narrow walls and red brick buildings in charmingly rustic condition. Nobody’s outside tonight.

You’re at the edge of the main part of the palace, a bunch of rowhouses where some of the more important staff reside. You open the iron gate to walk through the small garden that winds between the houses. You shut and lock the gate behind you-- you're a courteous visitor.

You hear the slam of a shuttered window opening above you. You look up. The Patrician and his Adviser proceed to fall from three stories high.

Not really how you wanted your evening to go. You’ve been witness to a lot of strange incidents here, but this one’s proactively taken the cake.

On watching their descent, you realize "fall" was incorrect verbiage, they proceed to _launch_ themselves out of the goddamn window. The Patrician has his arms wrapped firmly around Vriska's waist, and she's screaming somewhere halfway between frustration and rage. You see Vriska tense, blue sparks crackle along the Patrician's arms, and he lets go of Vriska to cast a gust of wind at her, cushioning her fall.

The Patrician hits the ground on his back, a bone-crunching, crippling noise accompanying his landing. He bounces once, limbs flailing, and comes to a rest in a crumpled heap on the grass. Vriska proceeds to land in a nicely trimmed shrubbery.

The Patrician leaps to his feet, no worse for wear. He didn't die from the fall.

"Hi! Hey! Dirk! Wow, I can’t believe my luck!" says John, with the excitement of a child about to open their Candlenights gifts. His voice is raspy, without air. "Guess who just killed me!?" He proceeds to point enthusiastically at Vriska.

“Okay, yeah, great job, John, just air out our dirty laundry to any random loser!” says Vriska, trying to facepalm but hindered by too many branches in the way.

You cannot comprehend what processes led to this outcome. What goddamn surreal plot unfolded here to lead Adviser Serket to strangle or hang or choke the Patrician, who for all intents and purposes, shouldn’t ever _die_ due to the whole cloning thing. Your own mocking voice echos ‘they’re fucking,’ and yeah, you still think that’s true, but you didn’t think it was like _this_. Bursting out a window in the middle of what looks like some sort of battle. This is… this is the kind of shit _you_ would do. Were they. Were they actually having a sexy fight.

You recognize the signs. The dialog. The crash through the window. It is similar to the physical fights you used to have with your romantic partners. But 100x more insane. Which is a fuckin’ _feat_.

From Jane's implications, you expected them to have wounds like handcuff scars or fingerprint bruises or severe lovebites. This is nuts. You’re kind of in awe of how nuts this is. Continuing past the point of death with a sex battle is fucking _insane_. Even you, master of extremes and going too far, would fucking _stop_ when you wounded or killed Jake. You're goddamn floored that they're capable of this. 

More than that, you are bowled over by the _sheer fucking incompetency_ the Patrician must have exhibited to wind up in this situation. You don’t care if it’s some kind of death match sex battle, he should always fucking win. How many abilities does he have at his disposal? How many fucking tricks and allies and people does he have looking out for him? He has to be one dumb motherfucker to wind up dead like this. Your respect for him jumps off a cliff. You see red. Emotions overwhelm your reasoning, and you start acting… unprofessional.

“The look on your face is _pretty choice_ right now, my du-”

You interrupt John to yell at him. “Excuse me, am I supposed to arrest her for god damn regicide or is this scene the result of some illicit post-orgasm bliss!? Is this the final coda of extreme sadomasochism!? Are you two fucking!?” 

They both have no idea how to answer the question(s). John shrugs, winces like he’s thinking very hard, and makes a series of indecisive noises like, “Nnnnn— uuuuuhhhhhh- ehhhhhhhhhh…” Vriska keeps opening and shutting her mouth like she’s thought up a response, but then immediately thinks of a better one a second later, ad infinitum.

You repeat, “Are you two _fucking!?_ ” in case if the multiple choices confused them. They keep having the same indecisive reactions. Not like they’re lying, but like they’re genuinely unsure.

"What the hell is going on!?" you demand.

Vriska curls her hands in, her color lighting John up, and she commands him to help her out of her greenery prison. She doesn't limit his voice, so he talks as he starts rearranging branches. "Yeah, Vriska, why don't you tell my buddy Dirk what's going on?"

Vriska looks surprised, but cautious. "< _Does ---------- embarrassed anymore?_ >"

"I was never ashamed of you!" chirps John.

Vriska rolls her eyes before John plucks her out of the bush and sets her on her feet. She straightens her outfit and toddles over to you, the necromanced John in tow. You crouch, ready your hand to unsheathe the katana from your back, in case if she tries something with the assassinated Patrician.

She looks proud when she says it. "Now, Strider, I don't know anything about you, but from the looks of it, you've never had a serious committed relationship outside of the one between your frond nubs and your bulge. Which is probably why you’re not picking up on the heavy romantic subtext here, since rational people would be ignoring us and going on their merry way. You see, I hate John. I _despise_ him. I _loathe_ him. Every time I look at his dumb face I want to wipe the smile off it. I hate his stupid tricks he plays, I hate his unfunny jokes, I hate how things work out for him, I hate when he ignores my genius advice to do his own stupid and inefficient and pathetic ‘nice guy’ plans, I hate how he sometimes even wins! Wins over me! _Me!_ I want to beat him at his own game every second of every damn sun rotation! I have never felt this way about _anybody,_ there isn't a single other person who's proven to exist on my level. Ain't that just the cutest shit you've ever heard?" She pauses for your response. She receives none. "Well, anyway, point of it all is that this is true hate and you can leave us alone now, thank you. The window incident was just another silly trick of his. No need to swing that katana around at me. Pretty sure that's high treason, Strider."

It takes a lot to baffle you. It takes a miracle, a real puzzler, to throw you off. This is the first time in years you remember feeling truly, utterly lost. You have no fucking idea why she would say that. Does this mean... it wasn't a sex battle? Does this mean she killed him for nefarious reasons? If she hates him, then she probably wants to overthrow him or oust him or eventually pull some other classicistic form of permanent regicide. Why in the hell would she reveal that. You thought she was smart. This development means you have to take her down.

John starts giggling. He puts his hand over his mouth to stifle it. “Vriska, there’s something you should know about Dirk. He grew up really deep in human country, and doesn’t know much about trolls.”

“What does that have to do with anything?” she says.

John lets out another spurt of giggles, before barely managing out, "You see, your speech didn't translate very well. Or at all, actually!”

Vriska raises an eyebrow, concerned you're not backing down. She says something in Alternian to John. He ignores her.

"Come on, Dirk, you're not going to let her kill me and get away with it, are you?" says John, waggling his eyebrows.

He has a point.

“Shut up,” says Vriska, rolling her eyes and twirling her finger around. Her blue necromancy crackles across John’s mouth. His lips press together in a smile. Vriska whips her head towards you. “Get out of here, Strider. Take a hint.”

“What hint?” you say, losing your cool again. You draw your sword as a threat. “You just killed him. You just said you despise him. That's not a hint, that's goddamn exposition!”

Vriska double face palms. "Gods, you're dumb. First of all, there's literally no reason to fight me. Secondly, look who I am in complete control of at this very moment!" she says, waving her arms around towards John. He poses for you, proudly. "You can't beat somebody who can suck the breath out of you while also hitting you with a billion watts of lightning and pummeling you into fantasy!Play-Doh with a giant friggin’ hammer! What are you going to do against a _living god?_ ”

You know exactly what you’re going to do.

"This," you say. 

You get one shot, and you're not going to waste it. You drop your sword, lash out for him, slap your hand against his chest, and take his soul.

You press the tips of your fingers to his heart, call something deep within you, and drag the soul of the Patrician from his chest. White strands of soul hang limp from each fingertip, until you pull fully out, and it condenses into a ball. It flits into the palm of your hand and hovers there. John's body, still flickering with the Serket symbol, collapses against you without a foundation to hold the structure up. You catch him against your shoulder— son of a bitch is heavy.

You have a convenient carrying case for his soul, a Di Stri special. You lift up your blindfold, then pop his soul into your right eye. He sits heavy in your usually empty “pupil,” the void of your eye filling with a pure white orb. You re-cover your eyes. John's presence does not affect your vision outside of a light tunnel glow on your stereoscopic right.

Vriska has her head drawn back into her face, her mouth in a disgusted half-moon shape. You get that a lot. "Okay. That was, uh," she finds the word in Common. "Fucked up. What did you do?"

"I'm sure you'd love to know," you say, buying time.

"Well, yeah, I would? Whatever, I'll just ask John later," she says, narrowing her eyes. She speaks slowly, choosing her words carefully in her second language. "You solved a mystery right there, though. I guess he hired you to do… whatever that was. There's a huge amount of expectations on your shoulders now, bucko. I bet he got allllllll nice and cozy with you before trusting you with this. Bet you're _best friends_ right now, huh? Bet you're just dyyyyyyyying to please him?"

You stay silent, filing that bit of information and its implications away for later. Right now, you want her to do something specific. You want her to make _a mistake_.

Vriska tenses up, about to fight. You don’t fear her. You took away the base, the soul, activating her necromancy now will require a larger sacrifice to be made. Her hands flicker with blue necromancy, her eyes shut, and she siphons part of her soul into John in order to cast a spell through him. The mistake. You spring the trap.

You've never done this before, pulling a living soul out through proxy of a dead body. You think this will count as her being dead, since a certain percentage of her soul will be in a corpse. You’re gaming the system, but still playing by the rules.

You place your hand along John's spine as his corpse moves against you to cast a spell of Vriska's choosing. You draw power from your core, feel Vriska's soul press against the membrane of skin keeping it locked in, and then pull it out like you're tugging a rope. White forms in your fist like torn batches of melty cheese. You feel Vriska try to tug back.

She can't get a firm grip on her own soul, lacks the inborn prowess to navigate the process, and you yank it fully from John and let it condense into a ball. Vriska collapses onto the grass. You pop her soul into your other eye. Your vision is feathered white around the edges now, like you were blasted into an uncreative version of heaven.

You let the Patrician down gently to the ground, and stare at the two bodies of some Very Important Persons laying dead/comatose in the garden. You getting cozy with said persons will look all sorts of incriminating if a normal guard or any staff member walks around the garden wall. You’d be in deep shit for a while trying to explain this one away, at least until they resurrect the Patrician. Yeah, you gotta clean this mess up your own damn self.

You don't have any expensive and rare resurrection scrolls offhand, and you don't know where to get one easily. You can't go to the Death temples, the Death priests will spread rumors and probably call for your immediate arrest. You need someone who will obey your orders, resurrect the Patrician, and keep their mouth shut about it. There's only one person who fits the bill. You've put it off long enough, prolonged the obligatory social interaction for months now, and dreaded it since you came here to live and work at the palace.

It's time to say hello to your ex.


	9. Sun Bleached Beauties

You slam open the door of your ex-boyfriend's basement warehouse, dragging in a large corpse and a vegetable piled on top of each other. Jake is doing what he does best at the reasonable hour of 2AM: being a fucking weirdo.

“Oh hullo, Dirk! I didn’t expect-”

Your lip curls up. "Again, Jake? I thought you were over this phase of your life. Tell me, Jake, tell me you're not-"

"Is… what you think I'm doing… taxidermy?" says Jake, nervously smiling. He flips the corpse down into his arms and gestures at the line sewn down her exposed chest. Just a suit of skin filled with cotton. Thank the gods. "It's part of my job, you big lout, and oh, here I am gabbing away when you've brought in my dear cousin. I'll hop right to it."

He is not, in even the loosest sense of the term, surprised you brought in the Patrician's dead body. It says a lot. Says reams, actually, could write a whole series of encyclopedias, an academic study on how often John Egbert comes in viscerally murdered. You follow him between rows of organized “relics,” dragging John by the arms, until you emerge in the larger morgue area. Exposed, pullout shelves of linen covered corpses and who-knows-what line the entire space. It smells like old books in here.

He sets the art piece down on a stained worktable, then covers her with a clean sheet. He peels off his gloves and apron and walks to a basin with a water pump, washes off his hands. "Bit different, you bringing him in. Usually the ever lovely Ms. Serket walks him down here, although I see she's deceased as well." He shuts his eyes, stills his hands. He gasps, lightly. "… Ah, wait, no, not quite. What happened to her?"

Jake is a necromancer, possessing an inherent death sense. He's an extremely shitty necromancer, so that's about all he can do besides for some soul siphoning and funeral parlor tricks. "Long story," you say. "Just deal with the Patrician for now."

Jake dries off his hands, then heads to the nearest bookshelf, flipping open a small wooden box on the top level. A few scrolls sealed with the royal wax stamp pop from the container. Jake reaches out for one, then hesitates. "Usually I grab a resurrection spell I crafted for these situations, but they take ever so long to make, and since you're here… I-" He turns to you, the kind of peaceful smile resting on his face that used to get your heart pounding. "-I'd like to play a round of chess with you, for his resurrection. The classic way. It's been a long while since we've played a game together, hasn't it? It's… very good to see you, Dirk."

You become painfully aware of the fact that you have been living in the same place as him for _months_ and haven't once tried to contact him. Nearly a decade apart from him, and you still can't manage to face your fear of intimacy. You dick.

"Sure," you say, instead of 'it's good to see you too.' You get worried, all of a sudden. It's not the high-stakes resurrection game for the Patrician's life, no, you're hands down slam dunk going to win. It's the fact that you're going to have to _socialize_ while you play.

Jake helps you heft John's body onto an empty table to lay out flat, and you position Vriska next to him. Her chest breathes shallow, eyes rolled back in her head, pure yellow. Jake guides you to a little two person bistro table in the back of the large basement, well away from all the taxidermy kits and corpses and various organ storage bins. It's located in more of a living-space area, with a small kitchen and bed, partitioned off by some folding screens with far-away places painted on the paper. You entertain the idea he's been to those places, but it's probably too optimistic of a thought.

There's a large shrine embedded in the wall, two jeweled snakes in red and green entwining around a golden incense holder. A monument to the Death gods, who symbolically 'possess' the Patrician's soul. Which you think is a whole barrel of horse shit since he's, you know, in your fuckin’ eye.

Jake places twin sticks of incense in the holder, one for each Death god, and lights them with a simple fire spell. He pulls a folded up chess set from a red drawer at the bottom of the shrine, carries it over to the bistro table, and invites you to sit down. You do. You watch him set it up. He recites the opening prayer of the game.

"May the gods of Death smile down upon the favored parties, the green party the Lady, the red party the Lord." He gives himself the red pieces, you the green. "The Lady wishes to win back the soul from the Lord, to obtain resurrection. I act as the Lord, to drag this soul to Death, and my partner acts as the Lady, to bring the soul life. Um. Best of luck?"

He must have done this a thousand fucking times by now and he still sounds like he's got no idea what he's doing. He's an ordained Death Priest for fuck’s sake, he should be playing chess and rambling off prayers like a pro. You stamp down the urge to give him a crippling defeat out of a misplaced idea that it'll toughen him up. You remind yourself that Jake probably didn't choose to be a resurrection gashapon of his own free will. It’s a hard thought to think. The reason you’re able to think it is because of lessons learned from _being_ with him.

After some anguished introspection over how and why you managed to fuck up your relationship with him, you've long since learned that Jake English is not what he's convinced he is (enjoys adventures, making friends, and fisticuffs) and the core of him is a viscerally different person (enjoys complete solitude, talking to no one, and stuffing corpses). At the time you begun dating him, you overestimated his appeal greatly, taking him at face value. In actuality, he is a silly, jumpy man who enjoys skulls and “blue women”— heavy quotes. As soon as you realized his failures, you tried to craft him into what you wanted. It didn’t work. Thus the person you see before you.

What can you say, you like a project. But are you good at finishing those projects? No. Not when they’re people.

Okay, and you maybe also fucked it up because you tried to fight him all the time. You may or may not have given him some sort of PTSD and human taxidermy obsession. You have definitely stabbed every major artery of his at least twice. And cut off a lot of his limbs. And head. Shout out to the very patient Death Priests for not asking too many questions and not overcharging for their services. You were certainly a rambunctious teenager.

He finishes laying out the pieces, spreads his arms out over the board, and beams at you. "Green goes first, pet."

You focus on chess in lieu of putting your fist through his eye for bringing back those fucking petnames. You think about attempting a Scholar's Mate but figure he's smart enough to catch it. You decide on basic pawn mass movement. You move your pawn to e4.

"So," you say, feeling awkward. "How are… things?"

"Peachy, actually," says Jake, who doesn't sense your trepidation. He pauses to think, moves his pawn to e5 to meet yours in the center. "I'm happier now than I've been in a long time. I'm dearly indebted to my cousin for letting me set up camp in the palace; you're lucky to catch me in such a lovely place."

You wouldn't call a warehouse full of stuffed corpses a 'lovely place.' But you think he means it in the spiritual way. Maybe. Jake's always been a puzzle, in the sense he should be so goddamn obvious you're not sure why you can't solve him.

You don't need to stop talking or listening to decide your next move, you're a master of multitasking. Knight to f3. "Why weren't you living here before?"

"Auntie gave me a whole host of tasks after mother died, took what seemed centuries to finish," he says, frowning. It jars you to imagine the previous, dead-eyed, cold-hearted Patrican being referred to as 'Auntie.' Jake takes thirty seconds to decide his next move, knight to c6. "The last of which was my training as a Death Priest. I didn't much like it. I suppose it ended up being useful in the end, my skills with a scalpel have improved tenfold since we’ve last met, Dirk! And as another upside, I can help out John whenever he needs a fixer upper. It's the least I can do to repay his kindness."

Bishop to c4. "How often does he die?"

"Once a month, thereabouts," says Jake. A minute to move his pawn to d6. "Always with Ms. Serket. I believe this is all part of some kind of game they’re trying to play. He said that they're… ah…"

Knight to c3. Jake pins your knight in by moving his bishop to g4 before finishing the sentence with, "… canoodling."

You feel some deep pit start to grow in you. You push it aside, focus on the branching paths your pieces could take. If you sacrifice your queen here, then you could put him in checkmate. You move your knight to e5 to take his pawn. "He said that," you repeat.

"Well… not exactly," Jake whispers, leaning across the chessboard as though John would suddenly arise as a zombie and start eavesdropping. "They’re doing that strange black romance dance. They enjoy riling each other up, playing tricks and things. I don’t believe it’s, erm, physically reciprocated all that often, they prefer the mental chess. Which is good, as they’re both rather… unwise."

Jake fucking English calling someone 'unwise' is one to put in the metaphorical scrapbook. You’re not sure what kind of Englishism ‘black romance’ is, but you can infer what it means. It shines some clarity on what John and Vriska have been doing. Looking back, just at the incidents in the past month, it should have been obvious to you. They play politics and assassination with each other, to achieve that high of victory when they win a ‘round.’ Horrifying if you think of the greater good, of pieces that need to be sacrificed in order to put the other’s king in checkmate, but you see the appeal. If you were a ruler, your garbage princely alternate self would probably be doing the same thing for entertainment. You’d probably have an adviser that’d be constantly fucking with/you too. You’re remarkably shitty that way.

But… from your brief glimpse into his character, John doesn’t seem like the kind of person to maintain strong rivalries just for the hell of it. That’s more of a _you_ thing. Or a Vriska thing, apparently. If what Jake says is true, why would he allow himself to play cruel games? Perhaps Jane was onto something.

“Do you think Vriska’s manipulating the Patrician into playing these games with her,” you ask.

"No. She does always _try_ to puppet my cousin… but it rarely works right. I think the only time it does work is in scenarios like this, where they fight or whatnot," says Jake, thoughtfully. "But John's too sharp to fall pray to her mindgames! Due to his bitch of a mother, he's rather sensitive to manipulative broads."

You wait for Jake to fall for your trap, bishop takes your queen at d1, before you immediately take his pawn at f7 with your bishop. "Check," you say.

Jake is incorrect. John doesn't catch on because he's sharp, or because he's 'sensitive to manipulative broads' (what the fuck, Jake); he catches on because Vriska wears her (confusingly hate-based) motives all over her sleeve. If she is as forthcoming with information about herself as she was with you, then no fucking shit he catches on. You wonder… if someone with a clever enough mind came along, someone who was subtle, someone he didn't suspect, if that person could manipulate John without resistance. He seems dense enough. It could be possible.

A future opens itself before you, with such clarity that you wonder for a brief moment if you've acquired Rose's soothsaying talent. You're something of a master at puppetry. You could puppeteer the Patrician. What if you could take advantage of his offer of friendship, finagle things in your favor, unseat Vriska from her Adviser chair and replace her, and essentially take over the kingdom from the inside. It could be easy. The only real obstacle would be Vriska, who alternates between brilliant and destructively blundering, but you could take her down with an appropriation of trust, of-

You shove the power fantasy away as quickly as you can. That could get fucking _dark_. Even imagining it is pretty sick. You refuse to become more of a monster than you already are. 

Jake takes a few minutes to move his king to e7 before saying. "Keep those tidbits on the hush-hush, Dirk. I don't believe it's common intel, but I rarely get visitors so I can't tell how often the dirt is dished, as it were."

You move your knight to d5. "Checkmate," you say.

Jake blinks at the board. "Oh," he says, surprised. "I guess it is! Fair and square, you've won again, pet. Let's go give John's life back, then. I will need his soul, I saw it was missing. I assume you have it?"

You turn away from him. Jake's seen your eyes before, but he always got squeamish looking into them during long nights, and you'll spare him from rehashing that suffering. You reach under your blindfold and tug John from your eye. Your vision returns to half normal, half haloed, since Vriska's still squatting in your socket. You cradle his soul in the palm of your hand, and Jake leads you back to John’s body. He stands at the edge of the table, and claps his hands together three times. He frowns, like he’s constipated.

John’s soul flies from your grasp and flattens out into a full disk behind Jake, christening his head like a halo. Red and green disks of similar sizes and vaguely ectoplasmic material also appear on either side of him. His face glows in the light of the contrasting colors.

“As it is in my power to do so as a blessed Necromancer Apprentice, christened representative of the Lord, I hereby announce the game has been played and fairly won by the party of Life. The proxy stands here before the host, and wishes for his soul back. Aaaaaamen.”

The red and green disks fly into John’s chest, causing his corpse to jolt, but the white one goes to his neck. It dives into his throat, then lifts, the wound left by Vriska coming with it as though it were picking up a pink string. The pink ‘string’ floats up, towards the ceiling, and fades like a grotesque watermark. The white disk then pops itself into John’s mouth. A beat passes.

John sits up, his eyes blue again, coughing and hacking and hitting his chest with his fist. You and Jake wait for him to recover. John swings his legs to sit on the edge of the table, takes a deep, laughing breath, then clears his throat.

“Thanks a _ton_ Dirk,” he says, his voice a bit raspy. He coughs again. He’s smiling through it all like he just had a free pony ride at the fair. “And thanks for resurrecting me, Jake! I owe you one. I’ll send some more interesting bodies off death row your way, okay?”

Jake looks pleased about this. You’re not letting John dodge this one. You’re asking questions, taking notes, whipping out the magnifying glass, and incessantly fucking with him. You’re gonna make Jane proud.

“Hey. So. How’d you die.” you ask.

John just… stares at you. Like he didn’t hear you. You think of the conversation Jane had with you, how he lies. You don’t figure him to be a good liar.

“Did she choke you to death.”

He continues staring at you.

“Are you into violent erotic asphyxiation,” you ask, point blank.

“No, that would be super weird,” says John, voice flat. “We had a fight… um… about politics stuff? And she… uhhhh… pushed me out a window? I died from the fall, duh.”

That lie was so bad it loops around three times and somehow becomes a good lie, because who would possibly have the nards to deny the wound you saw with your own two eyes. You’re fucking floored. “You. You didn’t die from the fall, sir. I literally watched the weird, probably sex-related choke wound lift off your dead body. You can’t lie about this. There is no possible way you can.”

“It was a fall wound,” says John, in the same deadpan tone.

“It was probably the fall! It definitely wasn’t adult related! That would be exceedingly uncouth!” whimpers Jake, his eyes begging you to not hint at the fact he confirmed that they’re ‘canoodling.’ You give up. You can’t be a dick to Jake and keep pushing the issue here, not when you’ve been a dick to him for so fuckin’ long. You press your palm into your forehead and let the both of them drive their respective carriages straight into denial town.

“Dirk has got the Lady Serket’s soul under lock and key,” says Jake. “Shall he put her back in place?”

John holds out his hand, a ‘wait’ motion. He chuckles, softly.

“Now hold on. I can’t let a golden opportunity like this pass me by! Jaaaa-aaaake, do you have some ink and a paintbrush?” he says. He rubs his hands together, greedily. “Because I’ve got a big, blue mustache with Vriska’s name on it.”

Jake laughs, despite himself. He starts walking out of the corpse-area. “Sure. Hold on a tick.”

John stands up, and turns his back to you to watch where Jake’s going. Your heart starts racing, for little reason. You’re not sure what caused it: the change in your perception of John, the torchlight catching his glasses just right, the silence in the basement warehouse, maybe the witching hour… But you start doing something stupid. You start _staring_.

You stare at the curves of his shoulder blades, snug under a well-fitting vest. The tousled hairline on the back of his neck. His sharp jawline, his strong hands, his _excruciatingly plush_ rump. How would his fingers feel, brushing along the delicate part of your throat. How good would his arms feel, holding you down. How would he act in moments of intimacy, what kinds of noises would he make, how would he taste. And you try, fruitlessly, to block the grotesque conclusion to your lust, to stamp it down, to not wake that sleeping beast any more. But your dark, morally bankrupt fantasy comes back with a roaring vengeance.

Power isn't the only thing you could acquire from puppeteering the Patrician.


	10. Unquenchable Thirst

Vriska doesn’t notice the mustache post-revival for an hour. The Patrician cannot stop giggling about it for the rest of the evening. He makes you promise to “keep this on the down low, pretty please!” You agree. 

That night, you go to bed terrified with yourself. That brief daydream plagues your head, and the more you try to suppress it the bigger it grows. Manipulation. Puppeteering. Games. You like playing games. You want to play a game.

Thinking this stuff means you’re slipping. You can’t slip. You can’t let yourself run wild without restraints. You have so many dark splinters, parts of you which you think you've managed to wrangle into submission since you were eighteen or so. Parts that insanely, obsessively, and violently insist on teaching people lessons. Parts that would murder someone without hesitation if you thought it would make them a harder/better/faster/stronger person. Parts that want to think through every branch and every pathway and every possibility in a series of steps and steer them to _the correct end_. Parts that want to play games.

You take a sick day the morning after, spend thirteen hours meditating in your unfilled bathtub. It's remarkably idiotic, that it's getting to you. Logically, you know it's unattainable, that you're _not_ going to scale the ladder and become some dark right hand man fuckboy to the Patrician, because that would be _stupid_. Rationally, you know it's your own imagination, skyrocketing off the charts and ascending into space. But what bothers you isn't the bizzaro world future you've dreamed up for yourself, it's the fact that you're thinking these things at all.

When you were a kid, you always used to feel like you were on the edge of becoming some horrible monster. The fact that your Mothers are literal monsters didn't help your projected career path. Rose and Dave never had the same psychological struggles as you. While they had their own problems, you all complemented each other, kept each other fairly sane-- before you went your separate ways. You went off to academy to try to make it on your own, actually made a lot of those fantasies into reality, completely failed at it, and fucked everything and everyone up.

But in retrospect, while it was… not necessarily good for everyone else, it was good for _you_. After making a series of escalating mistakes, you finally learned the pattern, the common variable: no matter the intent, your manipulative actions were _always_ evil and bad and wrong and you had to put that away. You got a military job way in the middle of nowhere and funneled your urges into manipulating resources and field tactics instead of people's hearts, and it was fine. Fun, even. You thought you were over that phase of your life. But apparently not.

What snaps you out of your own self-circling narcissism is… John himself. 

Sometime in the evening, when you’re zoned out, staring at your bathroom ceiling, John’s voice suddenly pops into your ear. The perfect silence you’ve maintained for hours is murdered with a knife. You about have a heart attack.

“Ah, hey, Dirk, I heard you were sick, so I-”

“Fuck! Fuck,” you sputter, slamming your head on the bathtub rim. You cover your eyes with your hand, ignore the throbbing of your skull, and say calmly, “Sir, how did you figure out my intercom.”

“I dunno, I figured you’re one of those ‘technomancy standards’ guys so I just checked the usual spell lines where I’ve seen it before,” he says, his voice tinny and distant. “Too bad I can’t let myself in! This is… uh… a pretty hefty system, dude. I’m just going to ignore the fact you proooooooobably didn’t get clearance for this. Anyway, I brought you something to eat? As a thank you.”

You sigh. “Give me a minute.”

You heave yourself out of the bathtub, stretch out your limbs. As you’ve neglected to blink for a while, you have to wipe the black fluid dripping down your cheeks with a towel. You put on your blindfold, take a deep breath, and open your room’s door for him.

He stands there in full Patrician garb, black cloak in mid-billow. As soon as the door opens far enough, his cloak wraps around you, gentle, like lapping waves. He’s holding a three tiered metal lunch tin, about the size of a small loaf of bread.

“Wow, you look terrible,” he says, frowning at you. “Roxy said you said you had a cold, but it looks like you don’t want to eat at all…” 

You open your mouth to answer in the affirmative, but your stomach decides to betray you and rumble loudly. You haven’t eaten anything all day.

John giggles. “Well, good. I was going to invite you to dinner tonight, and it was going to be a nice one. But I got all the stuff so I put it together for you anyway. It’s not soup, but I hope it makes you feel better. Eat top to bottom, okay?”

You take the tin from him, and stare at it, dumbly. You feel taken aback by the gesture. You say the only thing you can say, “I… uh… thank you.”

“Hey, no, thank _you!_ For helping me last night.” He raises his arms up, then lowers them, frowning. “I’d hug you here, but I don’t want to get sick.”

Dammit.

“That’s all I came for. Get some sleep, and that’s an order,” he says, winking.

“Will do, sir,” you say. You watch him wander off, stop to talk to some servants down the hall. You shut your door and lock it. You sit down at your desk to eat the multicourse meal. The first new feeling in twenty hours arises in your head: regret. You shouldn’t have taken a sick day to mope. This is the kind of food you eat in good company, the kind that you spend hours getting to know. You could have been making and eating this with him.

The tin has temperature enchantments that deactivate as you open each layer. You do what he told you, eat in order before moving to the next one. The first has a soft, butter-like pâté fried gently on one side, with a dollop of rhubarb compote and a slice of puffy bread. The main tier is stuffed with beef cheek and rigatoni, the meat savory and fatty and pull-apart melt-in-your-mouth. For dessert, a poached apple with something whipped and vanilla in the hole of the core, and caramel sauce drizzled over the top.

It’s so good you could cry. You… you think you might _actually_ cry.

You think as you eat slow, spending time on each bite, licking every last crumb from your utensils. You cannot estimate how much effort this took to make. He’s pretty efficient in the kitchen, and his constant magic usage doesn’t hurt either, but there’s a hell of a lot of moving parts in this dinner. How long did this take, a couple hours? Retcon powers or not, that’s a hell of a time/life sacrifice made for you. You, a chump who doesn’t deserve it at all.

You feel the buildup behind your eyes with every forkfull. You feel like you’re going crazy. Getting emotional over fucking _pasta._ It’s… it’s just _really_ good.

It reminds you that you can’t backpedal into being an asshole, because you care too damn much.

It’s what always ends up saving you, in the end. The _personal,_ the heart and love of it all, that finally drags you kicking and screaming away from your dark power fantasies. You forgot, caught up in your own bullshittery. You… think you genuinely like the guy. Not just for his taut abdomen, but for the taut personality inside that abdomen. You were othering him, dehumanizing him. Looking at him as a tool to use. But he’s not that. He’s a somebody. And you cannot _consciously_ hurt the people you care about. 

You manage to lock the dark desire for games and fixing and other nefarious shit by eating it away. But you cannot eat your goddamn boner away.

Over the next fortnight, it takes you over like a goddamn infection. It’s like you got triggered by the knowledge he’s into some subversive shit. You always thought he was a fine hunk of man meat, but now he's something you actively want to stick your dick into. Your fantasies are all about him now, whenever you jerk off. Which isn’t all that often. You only masturbate every 4-5 days in order to save up your Masculyyne Enyrjjies, because you are absolutely that type of guy. It's the least attractive thing imaginable: you stare dead eyed at the ceiling, make no noise, and jerk it like chicken. No lotion or anything, real men do it dry. You think about… well, every fetish under the desert sun.

You really do like _anything_ when it comes to sex, you like fucking and getting fucked and soft sheets and leather and pain and puppets and roleplay and basically everything except for emotional intimacy. But there's something especially choice fantasizing about your own guile getting you into certain positions. You wanted it, you got it, you're getting rawed in the ass while blindfolded, tied up, tended to by two Patricians, and hangry for delicious chocolate.

You have. Perfectly. Normal. Fantasies.

Post-orgasm, when you are a weeping shell of your manhood and you are left with the crippling, bone-chilling knowledge that you just masturbated to mental images of your boss, it's not so appealing. Give or take fifteen minutes, when your Masculyyne Enyrjjies have returned to you, and you're back on your bullshit. The dude's just too fucking attractive.

Besides for aggressive masturbation, you continue to learn Alternian in your bathtub. You’ve finished ‘R’ now, almost done. You have a practice conversation in Alternian with Roxy one day. You aren’t speaking Alternian, of course, you’re not fluent and you don’t want to sound like an idiot.

You’re sitting in your room, chatting on your bed. She’s wearing the cutesy cat earrings the Patrician picked out the day you went out shopping with him.

“Nice earrings,” you say.

“< _Thanks! Egbert got me ‘em,_ >” she says, flicking her earlobe. “< _He’s such a sweetheart._ >”

You’re reminded of Vriska’s words, ‘I bet he got allllllll nice and cozy with you before trusting you with this.’ You have to know.

“Hey, Rox’?” you ask. “Do you ever think that the Patrician wants to… use you for something? Like he's trying to be friends with you so you'll do something… out of the ordinary for him, when the time comes.”

She answers happily, without hesitation. "< _\--!_ >"

"What's that word mean."

Roxy facepalms. "You know the word for '< _hyperbaric_ >' and you don't know the word for 'yes!?' Dirk, has anyone told you that the way you learn languages is fuckin’ insane?"

"Not my fault that no one else learns a language rationally, in alphabetical order," you say, mildly offended. "So what do you think the Patrician wants from you."

If Roxy had eyes, they'd be lighting up right now. "< _He's gonna offer me --- I've always ----! And it's ---- I've been ---- to do *forever.* It's going to be awesome._ >"

You frown. "What is it."

"A secret!" she sticks her tongue out at you. "< _Mostly 'cuz it'd be really embarrassing if I happened to be incorrect and he didn't end up asking it of me._ > I can't let you shame me, Strider, my lil' bloodpusher'd never be able to take it. But if my instincts are right, and they totes are, then you'll find out eventually!"

"That's… ominous."

"< _Pssshhh, not really,_ >" she says, waving her hand dismissively. "< _\--- do you ask?_ > Do you think he wants something from you, too?"

Probably. You wonder if you were specifically brought here as a pawn in John and Vriska's odd games, or if there's something else he wants you for. That would be remarkably maddening if you were exclusively here for the former. You might fucking flip if that's confirmed to be the case. “Yeah, I suppose so.”

You change the subject after that.

You also make attempts to visit with Jane. You want to talk to her about what you saw with Vriska and John. You don’t get a chance for the foreseeable future— she’s busy, you’re on duty, and the guards are preparing for a high security visit from Her Ardent Auctoritas. You send Jane a couple privatized, spell-locked interdepartmental letters about the JohnVris situation, and the both of you agree that some of Jane’s initial assumptions were probably correct: they are playing games, and _something strange_ is going on with him to make him want to keep up the rivalry. She still insists it’s abuse, you don’t try to argue it through letters. You’ll just have to tell her the gritty details in-person later.

You get an invitation to eat with the Patrician the night before Her Ardent Auctoritas arrives. The letter is slid under your door by the friendly dorm mail-carapacian, and she means well but it triggers all sorts and alarms and metrics you’ve got set up in your room. You have this high pitched, magical chirping in your ear for a whole hour after she delivers the letter when you aren’t present— you think it’d be in poor form to cast a spell to remotely turn them off mid-council meeting. You’ve got a professional appearance to maintain.

You get a chance to read it in the afternoon. The invitation is scrawled in blue, sloppy ink on cheap parchment, says nothing but: “hey! come eat dinner with me. it might be pretty late though, like 9pm ish? see you then.”

You’re obligated to go. Not that you’d say no even if you _could_ say no.

You arrive at exactly 9pm this time, and the door to the foyer lets you in at breakneck speeds. A mysterious gust of wind picks up as soon as you’re in the main hall, causing a piece of paper to slap into your forehead. You peel it off your face.

It says: 

dirk!

roof. now.

bring soup.

(it’s in the kitchen, feel free to grab a bowl and something to drink. the path’s clear for you.)

The hallway that’s lit by the alchemic lanterns is one you’ve never been down, the one dead ahead of you. You make your way through the usual hallway to the kitchen, the lights along the walls sparking and dimming as you walk along the route you know by heart. It begins to smell like apples and buttery, warm shrimp.

There are two dutch ovens on the unlit stove, ladles set out on seashell shaped holders next to them. You open the lids. One appears to have some kind of cider, the other has a pale yellow-orange soup inside, which is the source of the shrimp smell. You grab a bowl and a spoon and a _quality_ mug from the cabinet, and ladle yourself some late night dinner.

You walk back to the foyer with your goods, then down the lit hallway. This hallway doesn’t just go straight to a ladder, oh no, it’s a fucking maze back here. Your path is laid out for you and you don’t deviate, but there’s doors upon doors upon doors back here. These quarters are more what you’d expect someone royal to own: tall ceilings, big windows, ostentatious art everywhere, fancy ass rooms you aren’t allowed in. The guy has mastercraft art and architecture oozing out of every bourgeoisie pore in his body and you don't think he cares about any of it. You spy what you think is his bedroom down one corner, the door thrown open, moonlight shining on a large white comforter. 

That is, unfortunately, not where you’re going.

You twist through hallways that have no business being this large, turn around corners, remember your movements and positions so you can make it back without getting lost. Only one thing makes you pause. A portrait on the wall. Four kids, two mothers, and the implied presence of four different fathers.

It must have been painted well before you knew the family. You first got involved with them when you dated Jake for three years or so at academy. Related tangent: it's weird that you're semi-attracted to a guy who looks pretty similar to him but with a palette swap. You apparently illicitly enjoy the bodily archetype of 'men that can crush you.' What's that say about you? You know exactly what it says about you.

Fuck, you got distracted by dudes again. You _do_ know when this was painted. This must have been painted just before the Crocker sister on the left was found eviscerated and stuffed. You forgot about that. This family has a long history of violent usurpations. John is the outlier.

The ladder to the roof is in some sort of storage closet. The bottom rung is up a couple feet, and there’s a moldy crate underneath it to compensate for the distance. You balance the soup and cider in one hand, and then climb the ladder. You make it up to the roof without issue. 

You are at one of the highest points of the palace, a flat plateau of brick that sits underneath a few decorative spires with flags at the top. It’s not very big, and there’s no handrails. The roof is basically a platform with a sharp dropoff into the jagged, city-like mess of palace complex below. 

There’s stars above you, the river before you, and the sprawl of Porkmor-Kahn on either bank. The river shimmers with the reflection of moon and starlight, chunks of floating thin ice interrupting the perfect mirror here and there. The lit lanterns and city lights glimmer a friendly, populated orange against the banks, a forest of people against the dark path of stars. You can see the blackness of the ocean far in the distance.

It’s snowing. It’s the first snow of the season, a thing which usually means knife-like sleet raining down from the sky, but this time it’s just barely cold enough to have actual snowflakes. Big, fluffy puffs of white float down gently from the sky, matching the stars above in glowing whiteness. You get a childish urge to stick out your tongue and taste one. You do. Not quite as good as the Patrician’s cooking.

He’s sitting at the edge of the roof, his back to you. You walk to him, your steps loud against the brick.

“Having any deep thoughts up here?” you ask. “Stars are out, it’s snowing a bit, shit’s ripe for philosophical musings.”

“I am, actually,” he says, without turning to look at you. “I could get my incredibly ripe philosophical musings picked by nubile worker hands, I guess. Sit next to me.”

He pats the chunk of roof to his right. You settle down next to him, your bowl in your lap, your legs swinging over the edge. You set the mug of cider down carefully on the edge of the roof. He has empty dishware next to him. He’s wearing that velvety blue smoking jacket. His face is flushed. You wonder how much alcohol is in the cider.

He doesn’t look at you, eyes focusing on the city skyline spread before you. You watch the massive flakes of snow float onto him, stick onto the edges of his glasses, his hair, his shoulders, then vanish without melting. He must be casting some kind of personal, minor weather spell. He slides closer to you, his shoulder rubbing warm against yours. You manage to suppress a lot of things, including a shiver.

“Dirk,” he asks, looking over the silent city. “Do you ever get scared you’re becoming your parents?”

You stare at him. “I was born from a writhing brood of sixty mothers in the Deeps.”

“Uh.”

“But yeah,” you say. “Why? Do you think you’re becoming your dad?”

“Nah,” he says, smiling faintly. “My mom.”

You have no idea what the hell kind of response he’s expecting, so to buy time, you eat a spoonfull of soup. It smells like seafood and tastes like… not seafood. Like pumpkin, maybe. You don’t know your vegetables very well. It’s good, not your favorite or anything, but it gives you a feeling like you’re eating a homely soup in a kind witch’s cellar after journeying through the woods for days. You have a feeling you were supposed to grab some bread along with it, the soup is velveteen and without chunky vegetables.

You’re saved from having to think of a response. Still refusing to look at you, he asks, "You were in the military when my mom was around, right? Do you think I'm like her?"

"No, you're too… kind. Casual. Lackadaisical," you say, answering honestly. "She seemed the 'control with an iron fist' type."

"Mmm, yeah, that is true," he hums. 

The spiked cider has a metric shit ton of alcohol in it, you nearly burn your lungs with the x-treme ethanol levels getting huffed. Yeah, you are _not_ drinking all of this. Judging from his empty mug, and the fact he seemed to get tipsy from only like, two glasses of white wine that one time, you’re pretty sure he’s some level of drunk. Great time to prod. “I'm honest to goddess surprised that somebody like you could be raised by someone like her.”

“What do you mean? I was everything she wanted; I was a good listener,” he says, and starts ranting without stopping for a breath. You guess he's a chatty drunk. “I know I was always the favorite, because I was always the one who did what Mom said. I mean, she loved Jade! And Jake and Jane too. But I never acted out like Jade, I never got power hungry like Jane, and… uh, Jake was never fun at parties.”

You blow on your next spoonfull of soup before saying, “She sounds as controlling with your family as she was in the public sphere.”

"Yeah. It’s like she couldn’t- couldn’t stop. I… um… think her end goal was to retire and let me take over, but she'd still be influencing me and making the decisions and stuff from the shadows. It never could have worked. I know I'm pretty a go-with-the-flow guy, and I really _do_ appreciate advice and direction, but she never got that I'm not dumb. See, the thing that Mom never understood is…"

He leans forward, gazes out into the distance. He rests his elbows on his legs, steeples his hands together, and places them to his lips. He looks serious, for once, when he says, "I am nobody's puppet."

You're glad you (mostly) got over your own bullshit a couple weeks ago, otherwise you'd probably fall off the roof with that custom-made stab to the chest. Nice callback, though. It makes you uncomfortable enough that you segue straight out of there.

You buy time with more soup eating. “And you think you’re becoming her, for some reason.”

"I dunno. Just thinking about it. I got a letter from my dad today, which reminded me of something a friend once told me, which made me think of this stuff," he says. He reaches into his jacket pocket and hands you a note printed on a thick piece of cardstock. You read it in the ambient light of the palace below you.

SON.

IF YOU ARE READING THIS, IT MEANS YOU HAVE LONG SINCE BECOME AN ADULT MAN AND NEED NO MORE LOOKING AFTER. BUT A FATHER STILL WORRIES ABOUT THEIR CHILDREN, NO MATTER HOW OLD THEY ARE. WHILE YOUR SMILE IS STUNNING, YOUR PERSONALITY DAPPER, AND YOUR MUSCLES RIIIIIIIIPED, I FEAR THAT THE PERSON INSIDE ISN’T GETTING A CHANCE TO SHINE. YOU ARE DOING WHAT YOU WERE TAUGHT, JOHN, NOT WHAT YOU WANT.

I SUSPECT YOUR MOTHER'S DASTARDLY MACHINATIONS HAVE AFFECTED YOU DEEPLY. THIS NOTE IS TO ASSURE YOU THAT THERE IS NOTHING TO WORRY ABOUT. SHE IS GONE. I HAVE THOROUGHLY CHECKED. AND ALTHOUGH I WILL MISS HER BEGUILING PASTRIES, IT MEANS YOU ARE NOW FREE TO DO THE MANLIEST THING OF ALL: BE YOURSELF.

I AM MENTIONING THIS SO YOU CAN KEEP IT IN MIND, NOT TO PRESSURE YOU. YOU ARE A SENSIBLE, CARING MAN, AND I AM SO HAPPY TO BE YOUR FATHER.

I AM VERY, VERY PROUD OF YOU, JOHN.

This is rather revealing, in context of the last conversation. You think the only reason he showed you this is because he's inebriated. You focus in on the bizarre font. "Did he make this on a printing press?"

"No, his handwriting is just like that. And he makes his own paper, too."

"I am in awe."

"Yeah," he says, proudly, then tucks the paper back into his pocket. "It’s nice of him to send me letters, although I really wish he’d stay in the palace… I’ve done _so much_ to try to keep him safe, Dirk. But he always insists on getting out there and helping with stuff."

You finish off your delicious soup before responding with, “He taught you how to cook, right? Was that his hobby?”

He doesn’t answer for a long while. You don’t mind. It gives you time to admire his jawline, within kissing distance. His breath forms white clouds in the starlight.

“No, it wasn’t his hobby,” he says, quietly. “He taught me because I… Well, there was just this… I dunno, couple year period, when I was fifteen or sixteen… and I didn’t eat real well. I think I must have gotten sick a lot, or something. I’d either not want to eat at all or, like, just eat all this _trash_ for weeks. I got really thin. I still don’t know what was wrong with me."

You don’t say anything. You try very hard not to feel anything, either. 

The lack of self awareness here is truly mesmerizing. You cannot _imagine_ knowing yourself so little that you refuse to understand what/why/how you break down. Yes, John, you sound like you were ill, but it wasn't the fucking flu.

He continues. “Nobody was around to talk to about it. Dad was barely allowed in the palace, he kept pissing off Mom and punching through the jail cell walls. Jade was constantly requesting witch training waaaaaaaay far away, Jane was living with a merchant family, Jake was at academy. I had lots of friends, but like, I didn’t get to see them too often. They were busy with their own stuff, and I didn’t want to bother them.

“Vriska was the only one who noticed I was getting sick a lot, I guess? She tried really hard to make me feel better, but it never worked for very long. Also she ate as shittily as I did back then, ha ha. We were a pair like that. We used to be engaged to be married, did you know that? It was arranged, of course. I broke it off when Mom died.” He looks at his left hand, spreads out his fingers, ringless. “Because, you know, _Vriska_. But my fiancee or not, she understands me a lot better now than she did back then. She’s better at… at getting me out of bed nowadays.”

Wait, hold on, what? You want to put the breaks on his story and ask about that. But then you’ll lose where he’s going, and you can’t risk that. You let him continue. His shoulder shifts against yours, and you can’t suppress the shiver that follows.

“Anyway, even though Mom was super busy, in a way I never really understood until now, she eventually ended up noticing I was unwell. And since she, um, loved me and all that, she swallowed her pride. She canceled all my classes and my trips and my training and social duties for like four months and let me just hang out with my dad at his place. And he saw I was eating poorly and he had this idea, right? He was like,‘hey son, I know baking is more my thing, but I want to learn a new skill, so let’s learn to cook together!’ and I was like ‘yeah, dad, that sounds exciting!’. And we had a bunch of blunders and a bunch of successes but generally came out victorious, and it was a pretty fun time.”

You’re glad your blindfold masks a good proportion of your expression. “And that made you feel better.”

“Yeah it did! It made me happy to see somebody I loved enjoying the things I made for them,” he pauses to chuckle to himself, at some private joke. “And it still feels really good! But at the time, I think the best part was just spending quality time with my dad. I’ve got a lot of good memories from those couple months!”

He shifts away from you. He slides his hands under his glasses to dry his eyes. “Ha ha, um, sorry, that went sort of T-M-I there,” he says. He straightens up, looking embarrassed. “Anyway, I think I will go write a letter to my dad! He’s busy with his dadly activism with the Rogues and all, but he should really come visit me soon! I miss him…”

John stands up, brushes down his smoking jacket, and picks up his bowl and mug. “Feel free to linger. And get seconds if you want!” he says, going down the ladder. “And thank you very much for the company.”

You wave to him as he descends. You lay back against the roof, and stare up at the stars, and think about what he just said. You think of his touch. It’s much colder without him.

You don’t get seconds, and you decide not to interrupt his letter writing. You exit the foyer, and watch the security spells realign themselves on the door. You stare at the closed door for a while, standing there in the hallway like a moron. You have this thought, something wholesome, that by some miracle doesn’t tie into your garbage power fantasies, or your motives, or any of the nefarious shit constantly buzzing in your head. You think and hope that, for once, this might be selfless.

You think you’d like to be his friend.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And this marks the last chapter that I have fully written until chapter 16, so updates will now occur at a more... reasonable pace, haha. I do post extras about this AU at my tumblr if you get antsy -> <https://www.tumblr.com/blog/oxfordroulette>
> 
> Soooooooooo.... How's everybody liking the story so far? Good? Bad? Makes you HANGRY?


	11. The Auctor

You get a letter from your cousins the morning Her Ardent Auctoritas is due to arrive.

hey guess what  
the two coolest people birthed in the last century have spent a month in a half clawing our way to porkmor kahn for our collective bdays  
were hitchhiking our way over there  
rose is gonna show some leg to speed it up  
My skirt is going up past the knee. It flits in the wind, enticingly.  
frostbitten saucy broad alert  
see what we do for youse guys  
We do so much for youse guys. Indescribable amounts of much.  
We’re planning on staying in Porkmor-Kahn —namely, in the bourgeoisie guest parts of palace, if my schmoozing skills are still up to par— until Candlenights.  
hope youre pissing yourself with excitement  
dry yourself off and put on some fantasy!depends because  
here is my itinerary of candlenights things we will do that i have spent the whole night coming up with  
He spent five seconds on it.  
snowball fights but its like no holds barred void powers free for all  
candlenights rap session since roxys finally got common down pat  
gift exchanges where you once again assert your hyper masculine crafting dominance over us mere scrubs  
openly weep over how fucking awesome we are  
caroling  
We can't wait to see you two. Let's celebrate another year on this dismal planet, visit and reminisce like champions, and make Roxy's first Candlenights one to remember.  
Love and kisses.  
Rose & dave

You catch yourself smiling at the letter.

You guess Roxy's never celebrated Candlenights; she was introduced to you and Rose and Dave two months too late. Alternia has their own version of Candlenights, but there's less emphasis on the family dynamics and more on romance. From what Roxy told you, you think 12th Perigee's Eve is a holiday you spend with a romantic partner as opposed to your family.

Roxy's going to love Candlenights.

You get ready for the day in a zoned-out state of happiness. You dress yourself in your uniform, strap two of your katanas to your back, and head to the meeting point. Your task: you and three other human guards will accompany the Patrician to greet Her Ardent Auctoritas on the the Alternian side of the palace. 

The entourage isn’t for him, it’s for _her_. She has her own set of loyal guards, more burly and brutal than the light-armored Patrician’s Clerks, but for unspecified “privacy reasons” she’s choosing to shaft them in favor of his guard. Just for this first day of her residency, at least. You’ll be dropping the troll babysitting job after this initial visit, but she’ll need constant supervision when she’s here. 

While the assassination attempts on John's life have been ridiculously frequent as of late, the Auctor has it much worse. Her kingdom is going through a succession crisis. She’s got the throne, but the other tyrian is fighting tooth and nail for it. The Auctor has the support of the vast majority of Alternia, but the Renounced Empress Meenah Peixes has the support of a few rich old guard assholes waxing nostalgic for the Condesce. As is proper for a fucked up Plutocracy, that last group has big enough guns to pose a threat.

You know you don’t live in the country it’s affecting, but you’d rather have a succession crisis than live under the rule of the Condesce. Thanks a fuck-ton for that, Meenah.

It was reported that Meenah Peixes assassinated both the Condesce and Patrician Crocker at Jade Harley’s arranged wedding. The press was hyped on the blame train for weeks after, official reports were released like hot cakes, there was a show trial for an absent Meenah, and the collective populace of both empires tried desperately to find the missing tyrian blood. She emerged a couple months later, alliances with those against Her Ardent Auctoritas’ policies already formed, and kicked off the bloody and underhanded Alternian succession war. The Renounced Empress is holding her own, for now. If the Patrician ends up throwing his forces wholeheartedly behind Her Ardent Auctoritas, she’d crush her opponent. But he knows his people would be put at risk, so he sits back and watches and helps his ally through shadier means. You don’t think this is a problem. You think the Auctor will emerge victorious, unless if she’s somehow a fucking moron.

You run into another one of your coworkers in the hallway outside of your meeting spot, and the two of you enter together. The other two guards and John are already inside. It’s a reception room on the lower level of the palace complex, one easily accessible from the Alternian side of the city. John’s sitting on a bench at the opposite edge of the room. You and your coworker bow when you approach him.

“Hey, there’s the whole team!” says John, waving at the four of you. He stands up, at full height. “So, here’s the drill. Pretty standard escort mission all around, I don’t really expect anything to happen. The only special thing is that Miss Auctoritas is going to take a brief detour to change out of the clothes she’s been traveling in, so only Dirk is going to accompany her for that part.” 

For a second, you’re confused as to why he singled you out for this task. You then observe your coworkers: two men, one woman. You are intimately familiar with like, every fucking dude in the barracks willing to screw around with other men, and these two are not on that list. You also know the woman with you has a reputation for seducing some of the maids in random ass utility closets and getting comically walked in on. 

Apparently, he doesn’t trust your coworkers enough to not take advantage of/ogle the Auctor. Dick move on his part. You, horror of horrors, nearly open your mouth to tell him so. Stop. No objections. You’re on duty. You can’t forget that.

“The rest of you can follow me straight to the sitting room,” he continues. “We’ll be having tea and stuff, so unfortunately you guys have to stand around and probably be pretty bored while we gossip and what not. After that, she’ll have her own guards take over.” He pauses to grin at all of you. “On the plus side, there will definitely be enough extra goodies in the room for all of you to sneak into your pockets when we’re done chatting, if you like tea time snacks.”

Following his orders doesn’t come as naturally to you after that conversation on the roof. There’s a second of hesitation in your head, kneejerk reactions to respond with snark when he tells you what to do. It bothers you, that you apparently can’t jump easily over the line drawn between ‘friend’ and ‘boss.’ You focus hard on his black robes, how he stands different than when he’s alone with you, how his expression and the timbre of his voice changes _just a little_ when he has to act like a leader. He’s the Patrician right now, not John. 

It helps when you can label the ‘friend’ vs. ‘boss’ categories with different names. John vs. the Patrician. Just a change in perception. You’re used to managing your own splintered selves, so you can do it when it involves others. Although. You’re pretty bad at managing your own goddamn self.

You bow, just a slight bend at the waist, along with your coworkers.

You don’t have to wait long until the doors to the reception area are swinging open. Her Ardent Auctoritas and six large troll guards, in full armor, march into the room. Her shoulders are straight, her face flat, her strides fluid, and her gargantuan mane of hair massively intimidating. The doors slam shut behind her and her entourage. She stands and observes the room. Her face breaks into an inhumanly large grin, about six hundred shark teeth embedded into it.

“JOOOO-OOOHHN,” hollers the Auctor.

“FEEEEEFFF-FFFEERRIII,” hollers the Patrician.

They proceed to launch themselves at each other, collide in the middle, and hug it out on the dance floor.

At this point, you’re not surprised by the innocuous behavior. She seems dumb in the same way John seems dumb, but you don't have enough intel on her to tell if the dumbness is a ruse. You still like her leaps and bounds better than Meenah Peixes. 

You’re glad it’s not Meenah that John chose to ally with. The Patrician's office immediately saddled up with Feferi Peixes as soon as the Condesce was reported dead. You agree with the decision. You'd support the kinder one too, the Alternian Empire needs a shakeup, and Meenah would just be Condesce Part 2: Electric Boogaloo.

Besides, public opinion would have dropped drastically if the new Patrician aligned with the troll who murdered Patrician Crocker. You can't see John being so cold-hearted to ally with his mother’s killer.

He swings the Auctor around once, then sets her down. His cloak engulfs her, so you’re unable to see her. Some of the troll guards look nervous about that. Both the Patrician and Auctor begin simultaneously babbling in Common and Alternian with mundane niceties, “It’s been so long!” “< _I’m so happy to sea you!_ >”

The escort mission follows as planned, with you and the Auctor detouring to her boudoir, stacked full with unpacked trunks and boxes of jewelry. There isn’t a changing screen, so you debate whether to turn around and risk some sudden assassination attempt or lean cooly against the wall with your arms crossed and pretend you aren’t phased by the Empress of Alternia changing in front of you.

You don’t get the luxury of picking an option, because the Auctor chooses for you. She dashes to the center of the cramped room, looks behind her to make sure you’re watching, and proceeds to yell, “Whoaaaa no! I dropped my shirt!” 

She rips off every item of clothing on her upper body and hurls them across the room. She then turns to you, tits locked and loaded. She puts her hands on her hips, and grins like she expects you to ravish her on command.

Any intimation you felt from her evaporates into secondhand embarrassment. You guess it wasn’t your coworkers that John didn’t trust. You wonder if John is overprotective of her or if he’s fucking her. If it’s the latter, then it’d be pretty damn hypocritical of him to stop her from having a fling with a trustworthy person. Either way, you do what’s expected of you. You back against the wall and cross your arms. “Apologies, Auctor. I’m not interested in women.”

The Auctor blinks at you, then withers into a frown. “Oh my cod. Sorry,” she whines. “This isn’t fair. I just spent four weeks on the road and I can’t even have any fun.” She makes a noise like a pouty-face personified, then pulls a chemise on. You honestly respect her for being unashamed. That is a level of not-give-a-shit you aspire to.

"You’re Dirk Strider, right? Blindfold guy?" she says, grabbing an outfit from an open trunk. A flowing, daytime dress, in multiple colors and light fabrics, with a jacket of tyrian pink. She pulls it on over her head. "I heard you're trying to keep an eye on Vriska? Trying to sea if she’s making John stir-crazy?"

You sigh. "Can't anyone around here keep their mouth shut for two seconds?"

"Don't worry, it was just Jane! We’re fronds! She sent me a letter briefly mentioning it," says the Auctor, happily. She wraps a sash around her middle. "Anywhale, I'm behind you the whale way! They might be one shell of a team, but I'm scared one of them is going to totally snap if they’re together for much longer. So, good luck! Hope you find out somefin interesting."

That's not what Jane is worried about, but at least she has the same goal as the Empress of Alternia. You wonder, briefly, why the Auctor hasn't done anything. From all appearances, the Auctor appears to be his friend, and not just in the impersonal alliance way. "Have you ever asked him to stop… fooling around with Vriska?" you ask.

She rolls her eyes. "I'm his moirail, not his auspice."

You nod at her. You cannot possibly guess what those words mean. It's probably some elaborate cultural nuance, only on the Alternian-to-Common side of the dictionary. You should really finish up the ‘W,X,Y,Z’s and go through that side soon. The Auctor sits down to put a different pair of leggings on.

"I'm shore John doesn't know about it yet, but he will if you’re not careful," she says, voice lowering. She puts her shoes back on. "You can't let him find out. She’s reely important to him."

"Of course," you say, confused by her implication. You weren’t really trying that hard to maintain utmost secrecy. Why the hell would it be a negative thing if he finds out Jane is concerned about him and Vriska, that she’s roped you into it. Worst case scenario is that he tries to hide it from her even more. Which… isn’t that big of a deal, in your opinion.

"Good," she says, smiling. She stands up, fully dressed. She straightens her outfit. "Oh, and this codversation NEVER happened! Escort me to the sitting room, pretty please."

She takes your arm, and you accompany her to the sitting room. It’s small, but expensive. Big windows that look out onto the river, lightly dusted with snow. Ornate fancy couches, with flower patterns sewn into the cushions. A coffee table with a tray of treats, baked by the palace kitchen. Your coworkers stand in the corners, sitting or leaning against the wall, relaxed but attentive. John is bending over the table and pouring tea. He’s not wearing his black robes anymore. His ass, cupped by tailored, tight pants like two perfect hands, is at perfect viewing height for-

The Auctor tugs at your sleeve, and you lean towards her so she can whisper in your ear. “Are you staring at his ass?”

“What. No. I’m- I’m wearing a blindfold, what,” you whisper back, caught off guard.

“Aww, that’s cute,” she whispers. She puts her finger to her lips, a promise of secrecy. “Don’t worry, I won’t blab!” 

You retreat to your designated corner of the room in lieu of having to say anything. Is she, fucking, hyper empathetic or something?

You elect to stand, lean against the wall, behind the couch. John sits down, and the Auctor soon follows. She grabs her teacup, sits on the opposite end of the small couch, then swings her legs up so they’re resting on his lap. He paps her ankles, a friendly gesture.

“< _That was a mean trick, John,_ >” says the Auctor, sticking her tongue out at him.

“< _I have no idea ——— you’re talking about,_ >” he giggles. “< _And this is totally not related to the heinous things you’re imagining, buuuuuuuut… I know I’d be mad if anything got in the --- of our visiting time! ———— got state secrets to discuss and not a lot of time to be alone. Lemon bar?_ >”

He plucks the tray of sweets from the table and offers it to her. “< _I glubbin’ *love* lemon bars,_ >” she croaks, then takes four.

‘Be alone,’ huh.

The other three guards stationed in the sitting room aren’t known for their booksmarts, more for their resilience and attention. You get the sense John picked the four of you because none of you understand Alternian. Interesting choice. And an incorrect assumption. Even though you weren’t trying too hard, you suppose you were rather sneaky about your methods: the only people who know your newfound language acquisition are Jane, Roxy, and the librarian whom you checked the dictionary out with. Apparently none of them tattled on you. You stare dead ahead and pretend you can’t understand.

After the Auctor chokes down a couple bars with a few swigs of tea, she begins the conversation. “< _Okay, first of all,_ >” she says. “< _You may have noticed the slight increase in assassination attempts…_ >”

John takes a bite of an apple tart. “< _———, ——————————— that? It’s getting super obnoxious._ >”

“< _Meenah’s testing the ————,_ >” she says. “< _She’s testing *you.* She’s got her eye on both kingdoms! I think she’s trying to net both mine and yours in one cast._ >

“< _Um, she’s not doing a ———— good job,_ >” John says. “< _Besides, like, ——— kind of bad strategy is that? You’re basically ————————. And I could take her down in a second, Feferi. I’ve got armies and resources and people who love me. She has… two of those, I guess, but she has no friends. And friendship is the only thing that matters!_ >”

The Auctor narrows her eyes. “< _She’s got Kankri._ >”

John sighs, deeply. “< _She’s got Kankri,_ >” he repeats. “< _But I was thinking we could just ————— him away when her camp is sleeping or something. I’m not super scared after thinking it over. Vriska’s really excited about putting an anti-Kankri plan into action once —— find ——— they are. I mean, my dad and the Rogues are trying their best, but she’s apparently pretty good at hiding._ >”

“< _She’s spent her ——— life doing it,_ >” says the Auctor. “< _But… I’m ——————, because she hasn’t ———— Kankri yet. I think she has a horribubble seaprise planned._ >”

John is silent for a while. He sips his tea. “< _Is her plan to —— Kankri to kill me permanently?_ >”

The Auctor nods, slowly. “< _I think so. And then I think she’d cull Jane, too. I don’t know about Jake and Jade… She might keep Jake around on a leash, a puppet ruler. Or she might try to cull all four of you, maybe throw the ———— human empire into a crisis._ >”

John grits his teeth. “< _I —— not let her touch my family._ >”

“< _But what if she does!_ >” The Auctor snaps, then immediately backs off. She takes her spoon, stirs her tea, before continuing calmly. “< _You, um… I know I’ve said this a ——— lot, but… You kinda need to contribute your slurry to the future gene pool, John. Take a little human grub far away from here and hide ‘em so you guys don’t have to have a succession crisis and civil wars and stuff if Meenah… you know… does the impossibubble and succeeds._ >”

John groans, then runs a hand through his hair. “< _… Let’s not talk about that, okay? I don’t like thinking about it._ >”

The Auctor stares at the Patrician, her eyes oozing sympathy. “< _I’m going to have to insist, John. You’ve put it off for so long, and your sister and cousins aren’t breeding either! So it’s reely —— to you! ——— are you going to produce an heir?_ >”

Your mouth twitches, tempted to curl into a ‘what the fuck’ type of sneer. You keep it flat. The thought of being a parent is detestable to you, because you'd have to completely cease like 90% of your hobbies as soon as you take the little shit home, and even without your strange interests plaguing the household there's no way you wouldn't fuck up that kid. You tend to project those feelings onto others. You guess John is older than you, and is expected to have children as per the nature of his job, and he seems like the family type, but still. It makes you squeamish. Besides, the way the Auctor is talking about it, it sounds like they’re discussing breeding horses.

John says some Alternian curse word you don’t know, then sighs. “< _I was hoping to get married and fall in love beforehand and such, but… I can't- I don't know if I- I… I think I'm just going to have to be like my mom. Bachelor for life and stuff._ >"

“< _Great! Any ideas on who you want to fill a pail with!?_ >” asks the Auctor, leaning over her teacup and grinning wide, way too eager to know the answer.

John glares at a small apricot pastry. “Uhhhmmmm…”

The Auctor’s eyes narrow, and she leans towards him. She sets her teacup down in order to point an accusatory finger at him. “< _John! No question dodging allowed ————— I’m here! You’ve probubblely got at least three humans you have in mind, and I —— not make you say ———— they are! I just ————— to make shore you’ve got it covered!_ >”

He licks his lower lip, takes a couple seconds to respond. He’s not smiling when he answers. “< _… I guess if I *had* to… There’s this friend of mine and- and I think she’d be a great mom. I think she’d be really happy to be a parent. Even if I’m too busy to be a… um… even if she had to do it alone._ >”

You nearly break cover. You nearly burst into a cold sweat, your mouth nearly drops into a horrified semi-circle. He doesn’t say who it is, but you know. You know, and the thought disgusts you, and you think you’ve got to have a talk with Roxy Lalonde as soon as you get out of here.

“< _——, beta get on that!_ >” says the Auctor, clapping her hands at him. “< _I think this is past the point ——— you *have* to do it._ >”

“< _Shore, —— ever you say,_ >” he says, resigned.

The Auctor drops the topic, and they talk about other gossipy things not worth listening in on: random friends you don’t know, Feferi’s latest conquest, etc. Your heart hammers in your ears the entire time. It’s loud and obnoxious and you cannot shut it off for the life of you.


	12. All in the Family

At night, when you go to Roxy’s room, she’s absent. “Snuck out again,” say her bunkmates. You tell them to let you know if she comes back at a reasonable hour. She does not come back at a reasonable hour.

You spend the night laying in bed and wondering what the hell you would actually say to her if you talked to her about it. ‘Hey, maybe don’t fuck the monarch of the Earthen empire to get pregnant, are you sure you know what you’re doing.’ ‘Maybe don’t have sex with the guy I maybe, sort of, fantasize about smashin’ & bangin’. If I can’t, you sure as hell can’t.’ ‘I know you were looking for somebody to throw money at you while you casually date around and wallow in happiness with some kids and I realize this is a perfect opportunity for you but, well, maybe not John Egbert, okay.’ ‘Maybe don’t start that family you’ve always wanted.’ ‘ _Maybe don’t start that family you’ve always wanted._ ’

You’d sound like an ass if you said any of those things. Are you being an ass about this? They’re well into adulthood, they can make their own decisions. You don’t always know what’s best for everyone, much as you think you do. You might hurt her feelings if you question her ability to make her own choices. What if you hurt her by bringing it up at all, what if you end up manipulating her just by mentioning it. That is a thing you cannot let yourself do.

Are you freaked out only due to primal jealousy? That’d be understandable. He’s apparently planning on fucking your cousin. Your _cousin._ Anybody with half a brain and half a crush would get mad at that prospect. This is some kind of karmic justice for you fucking _his_ cousin way back when, isn’t it.

Anyway, there’s no guarantee Roxy’s going to say yes to John’s proposition. (She’s going to say yes.) And there’s no guarantee he’s even going to ask _her_ to bear a child. (It’s absolutely her.)

In the end, you are paralyzed by indecision, convinced you’re being narcissistic about this, and decide to sit on your hands and do nothing. Don’t bring it up, don’t say a word, spend four hours meditating in the bathtub and pluck out every feeling you have about it so it doesn’t mess you or anybody else up. You only partially succeed at that last item. You clear your head enough that it won’t fuck you up, at least, although you can’t look John in the eye for a couple days.

Thank gods for the blindfold.

*******

Rose and Dave arrive on your birthday. You and Roxy meet them at the palace gate, in the dark of winter twilight, bundled up in your cold weather clothes. They’re hitching a ride on some poor, unsuspecting merchant’s cart, and they hop off the back with their bags as soon as they see the two of you.

Rose gives you polite greeting kisses, alternating sides, making mock smacking noises in your ear as she does so. You wait until she’s done, then swoop her up into a tight hug and smoosh your lips to her cheek. She squeals in a hilariously undignified manner. You do the same thing to Dave immediately after, to the sweet serenade of him monotone rambling, “What the fuck, dude, what the _fuck._ ” He can’t resist returning the hug.

Roxy screams and throws her arms around all three of you. She doesn’t let go for the entire walk down to the market area. You chat and catch up and get huggy and generally make an embarrassment of yourselves. You always forget how fucking _dour_ you feel all the time until you’re back with your entire family. The constant, self-imposed mental burden you carry around is lightened by the love that permeates every single word you say to each other. Roxy’s enthusiasm. Dave’s poorly masked joy. Rose’s constant, fluttering laughter. You can’t dwell on your own problems when you’re so enamored of your relatives. 

As far as birthday presents go, it’s a pretty good one.

You try to eat dinner outside because all of you collectively decide it’d be fucking hilarious, but ends up not being so fucking hilarious when all of you freeze after five minutes and drag yourselves back inside the tavern like a bunch of kicked puppies. You sit at the wooden corner table in the crowded dining room, candles giving your faces a warm glow and lighting up your homely meals of potatoes and meat. The roar of the noisy diners around you gives you a public sort of privacy. The four of you are ass deep in your own world.

“Okay, so, get this,” says Dave, mouth full of mashed potatoes. “Rose actually had some relevant visions of the future for once, instead of just learning that Bumpis the Blacksmith is going to have a sixth kid, or whatever.”

“I’ve been working on honing in on only threads of fate important to those I care about,” says Rose.

“Oh my gosh, that’s great! I’m so proud of you, sweetie!” says Roxy, slamming her hands on the table. “Anything about us?”

“Two visions. Dirk’s the star of the show in the first, the second is about the both of you.”

“What did you see about me,” you ask.

“I haven’t the faintest fucking idea. But perhaps you can make some sense of it.” Rose spreads her arms out, ready to paint a masterpiece with her words. "You were sitting on your bed, judging from Dave's drawings on the wall behind you."

Dave ironically puts his hand over his heart and makes a stupid face like he's personally touched. You don’t know why he always does that, it’s not like you don’t have one of his drawings _tattooed on your fucking arm_.

Her voice gets low, like she’s trying to tell a ghost story. "You were talking to someone, but the vision is centered on you, so I am unable to determine who it was. You were bound, hands tied behind your back."

Roxy whistles, then proceeds to elbow you in the side three times.

Rose puts her finger up, demanding silence. "Thankfully, I don't believe I was witnessing my close relative’s kink indulgences. Not-thankfully, I believe you, Dirk, had been attacked. Your mandible was fractured, severely enough I could see where your anatomy was distorted by the trauma." She points at her jaw in two places. On the side of her face near the hinge, and under her lower lip near where your eye teeth are. "There was blood pooling from your open mouth, down one of your nice white undershirts."

"You can borrow my bleach later, if ya want?" says Roxy, a little concerned.

"Unfortunately I did not see if there was excessive amounts of laundry in Dirk's future, for it was just a brief view. But that wasn't the most striking detail about the scene. The face you were making Dirk, it was…" she pauses, gathering the words. "Rather manic. You had this grin plastered on your face. Allow me to demonstrate."

She proceeds to lift her bangs up, exposing her version of your family's inheritance. Rose does not have two black voids like Roxy, nor does she have normal eye sockets holding the abnormal like you and Dave, she instead has many pits bored into her face above her cheeks. Dark holes in different sizes and shapes are drilled into her skin roughly where her eyes should be, like gaps in a sponge. She uses her now-exposed, over-expressive eyebrows to pull her face into something you'd describe as a 'victorious sneer.' It doesn't look much like an expression you'd make. Her eyebrows are folded in, one side of her mouth is pulled up into a muscle cramping smile, while the other side is flat and dead.

Roxy and Dave snap their heads at you, demanding an explanation. You don't have one.

"Me," you ask. You’re having a hard time believing her. "Grinning. Blindfold off?"

She ruffles her bangs down over her eyes again, then folds her hands together, resting them on the table, trying to play the all-knowing seer. "It was off," she confirms. "Any ideas as to what pieces are in play to result in this future?"

You look at Roxy first, but she shrugs at you. You shake your head 'no.' You know Rose's visions almost always come to pass, but you're going to have to double check all your room security systems just in case you can prevent it. You wonder how someone gets the jump on you. You wonder why you're… happy about it.

"The second vision I had was much clearer, and revealed some rather enjoyable gossip," says Rose, smiling like she's just one upped you. "You two are in John's secret police. Which retroactively explains why Dirk 'willingly' moved from his dream job."

You and Roxy both groan. Roxy slams her head on the table. You start scolding Rose, in a harsh whisper. "Don't say that out loud. Make a blood pact and swear it on your life. We could get fired and fucking arrested if too many third parties are privy to our position."

"At least now I don't have to feel super guilty about not telling you two _that_ secret," says Roxy, into the table. She lifts her head up. "But what'd you see?"

"The mail center, in the palace," says Rose. "Your letters are, or will be, marked and read for security reasons."

You think of the few interdepartmental letters you've sent Jane about the Vriska situation. You hope that's in the _future_ , not in the present. You're going to guess it's the future, because you haven't betrayed anyone's trust enough to have them read your fucking mail. You'll stop sending non-personal letters just in case. You should also start sending graphic and violent erotic content through the mail. Maybe write a complex serial novel or something.

Roxy shrugs. "Eh, no biggie, I don't send anyfin I don't want read, anyway."

Dave raises an eyebrow. "'Anyfin?' What kind of shitty sea pun is 'anyfin.'"

Rose cackles. "We should start a sea pun tally. Wean her off the influence of her old 'girlfrond.'"

"Yeah, those bad sea puns are a crime against the gods," says Dave. "Fishes be trippin'."

That was cruel of them to make fun of, but you don’t think they know it. 

From what you’ve gathered, Roxy doesn’t like talking about her romantic past with Meenah Peixes. You haven’t learned much about what happened after she was kidnapped as a baby and spirited away to Alternia, because she isn’t forthcoming with the information. You think it makes her sad to talk about. You’ve gleaned that Roxy and Meenah were raised together in a secluded tyrian worshiping cult, and were therefore forced to be rather close. Thankfully, Roxy got some world exposure, met her long lost family, and realized Meenah was kind of an abusive beach. Dumped her quick as anything. Just in time to avoid being on the wrong side of the succession crisis.

You don’t have to tell Dave and Rose off for anything, because Roxy’s mouth folds into a weepy frown. Rose looks horrified with herself, and Dave stands up to leap across the table to apology-tackle-hug her. You yank him back down to his seat.

After you’ve finished the long social dinner, you walk back to where they’re staying. Rose wrote directly to John to request one of the best guest rooms in the palace complex, and he fucking delivered. It’s a two-bedroom apartment, on a high tier over the river. Red walls and red curtains and comfy red and gold velvet chairs deck out the plush sitting room that the four of you enter into. There’s four chairs surrounding a coffee table in the center of the room, a considerate touch.

“What are you guys up to tonight?” asks Roxy, setting one of Rose’s bags down near the entrance to the apartment.

“We’ve reserved time on John’s schedule,” says Rose. She pauses, like she made the attempt to wink, here. “But he would _make_ time for us, if needed. We’ve been bestest friends ever since Dave accidentally flash stepped us straight through the theoretically impenetrable walls of the main palace residence. And then tried to scam Jade and John out of some fresh apples they had. Ah, the bond that lasts decades: the bond of petty thievery and conning.”

“I was ten,” Dave mumbles. “And fuck you, you wanted dem apples too.”

You say goodbye to them with more hugs, but less ironic cheek kisses, looking forward to another month spent with your family.

*******

You get your own time with John a few days later. “We’re making soup dumplings!” he says, catching you in the hall just after your shift finishes and dragging you into his foyer, uniform and Unbreakable Katana and all. You take off your jacket and sword and scarf, throw it over the chair in the sitting room outside the kitchen, set your katana behind it.

He darts around the kitchen, gathers the ingredients and utensils together while you grind up some pork, chop some chives, mince some ginger. You feel warm and content as you put your hands to work, as you talk about normal topics, about Dave and Rose. You still can’t seem to open up fully, to broach that barrier of ‘friend,’ but hey, you’re working on it.

“So I owe you a birthday present,” he says, digging in the lower cabinet for a steaming basket. “I usually get Dave and Rose some neat weapons, whenever they’re around. But what do you want? I could take you out somewhere? Do you like dancing?”

You know how to dance, you know all the steps and movements to a stupid amount of contra, but you have no style. You've never seen yourself dance, but you have a feeling you look… stilted. "Not really."

“Hmm,” he says, placing the steamer basket on the counter and shutting the cabinet. He stands, hands on his hips, and looks around for something. “Okay… sooo… How about taking you someplace nice to eat?"

You slide your freshly minced ginger off the cutting board into the bowl of ground pork. "Sir, I mean this without any sentimentality whatsoever. I am only stating a fact: _this_ is the nicest place to eat."

John puts his hand over his heart, mouth in an open grin. "Awww, Dirk. That is so sweet. I'm gonna get cavities. But seriously, I have to figure out what to get you." He pauses to look around again. “You don’t see any gelatanized pork fat, do you?”

You don’t know what that looks like. “No.”

“Ugh,” he says, running a hand through his hair. “I told today’s fake-me to put it out. I guess I’ll have to go get it. Give him shit if he comes back before I do, okay? While you’re waiting, you can mix up the filling. The rest of the recipe is in the leftmost cookbook up there.” He points above the cupboards, where about ten well-worn cookbooks are resting. He leaves the kitchen, but yells back, “If you can reach it, short stuff!”

Fuck him. You do need to do some clever maneuvering to get to the cookbooks, but you manage. You find the soup dumpling recipe, gather the rest of the ingredients for the filling: salt and sesame oil and sugar and pepper and soy sauce, among other things. You follow directions to the letter, putting away the condiments when you’re done. As soon as you shove your hands into the mess of raw meat, sticky and a little cold, the ‘fake John’ enters the kitchen.

He’s wearing his Patrician’s cloak, but it’s billowing at a level you can only describe as half-hearted. He’s slouching a bit, blinking slow, and his mouth is unusually flat. He straightens up when he sees you, his cloak ruffles in an unfelt wind.

“Oh, hey,” he says, sounding tired. “Where’s the real me?”

“He went to get pork fat,” you say, your hands making squelching noises as you mix the filling.

John facepalms. “Shit, I forgot. Busy day.”

He yawns, then moves next to you to lean against the counter. He watches you fist some ground pork for a while before saying, “So I owe you a birthday present. I usually get Dave and Rose some neat weapons, whenever they’re around. But what do you want? I could take you out somewhere? Do you like dancing?”

This is so surreal you almost start laughing. What the _fuck_ , John. “Not really,” you repeat.

“Hmm,” he says, making roughly the same face as his other self did. “Okay… sooo…”

You come to a realization that you are talking to a dead man in his last moments. You can fuck with him to your heart’s content, and there will be no consequences. You decide to say something you normally wouldn’t. You want to see what happens.

“I do have something I want.”

He perks up immediately, his robes lapping at your ankles. “Yeah?”

You look him dead in the eye when you say, "I want you to perform a wild and fragrant bouquet of sexual acts on me."

There’s a second where he blinks at you, shocked, but then he bursts into laughter. He flings his arms around your shoulders and leans into you. All his weight is transfered to you as he sags low, his cheek bumping up against your ear. It might have gotten your heart fluttering, if he were lighter. You're too concerned with supporting yourself under 250 pounds of muscle to be school-girl flustered by this.

At least until he purrs, "Like what?" into your ear.

Your hands, embedded in a bowl of wet pork, spasm and make a loud squelching noise. You feel his breath on your cheek. An implausible fantasy takes you over, of having your own Patrician to play with for a day. That'd be one hell of a birthday present. But you’re fairly certain he’s messing with you. Dead man walking. Doesn’t have fucks to give.

You at least manage to make it sound like a joke when you say, "Slam me into the kitchen counter and demolish my ass, sir."

He hums, pretending to think about it. "That’s booooooooring.” 

He stands up, backs away from you. You exhale, half out of relief from your shoulders being freed, half out of the disappointment that, yeah, he definitely was just fucking with you. "That was super lame, Dirk. I thought you'd have a better punch line." He pauses to gasp, excitedly. "Oh, no, wait! I get it! It's like a multi layered joke masterpiece. You have a horse obsession. You like a _ride!_ ”

He proceeds to slap your left ass cheek hard enough to sting. You yelp. Before you can unstick your hands and whip around to give him a knuckle-full of raw meat, he's darting out of the kitchen, laughing uproariously. You hear him run through the sitting room and into the hallway, hollering, "Hey, tap me out!"

"Okay!" calls the "real" John, and there's a flicker of white light from a distance. Around ten seconds pass, and the alpha John returns, carrying a container of milky white meat gelatin set in a bowl of ice.

He's beaming. He places the bowl on the counter in front of you. "So what sweet prank did I pull on you?"

"You slapped my ass," you say, managing to remain deadpan, despite the adrenaline coursing through you. "I'm filing a complaint for workplace harassment."

His smile vanishes, taking you completely seriously. "Oh, shit, he did? That's not cool. I'm sorry, dude, I-" He stops mid-apology, then narrows his eyes. The grin returns. He wags a scolding finger at you. "Ha ha, you almost got me there. You're totally just messing with me. There is no way I would ever do that to you!"

"You're as sharp as a fucking tack," you say, hoping to work the eyeroll into your voice. He appears to take you at face-value.

You assemble the dumplings by twisting bits of the meat mix and gelatin together in circular wrappers of dough, then steam them in baskets set over boiling water. When you eat the dumplings, the liquid fat pours into your mouth like a filling broth, hot pork and dough pulling it all together like a good soup. You make a fuck ton of them, and you both eat them standing around the kitchen counter as each batch finishes steaming.

You’re off your game after the incident with the now-dead John. While you manage to have a decent conversation with the John right in front of you, the back of your mind is hung up on what happened. It fucks with your head so much that, when you leave his foyer, you realize you forgot your Unbreakable Katana in the sitting room. You don’t bother to go back and get it: you have plenty of shitty swords, and you’ll be eating with him again.

Besides, you don’t want to go back and spend time with him before you figure out his deeper motives. What does it mean, that a no-holds barred version of him hung on you like a bored boyfriend and touched your butt.

You know it means one thing: there is _no way_ he can “exclusively” be interested in women.

*******

"I'm telling you, the man is as heterosexual as a lumpy gray sock." Dave takes a swig of his hot chocolate. "Trust me."

"There's a story there," you say. "There's a really fascinating story hiding behind the 'trust me.' You said it like a goddamn ultimatum."

"Yeah, and it'll never come out of the closet it's hiding in," he says, flatlined. "Anyway, since he was fourteen fucking years old he's had this, I swear to every troll god in the planar sphere, this weird ass subconscious fixation on siring some buck toothed, near sighted, 18+STR kid into existence."

You're sitting in the swank-ass lounge Rose and Dave have in their guest suite, a kettle of hot chocolate, a bowl of whipped cream, and a bottle of cinnamon schnapps between the two of you. The cinnamon schnapps is the only reason you've gotten Dave to talk about John's sexuality without arousing suspicion. The conversation is unfortunately cut short when Rose and Roxy return from their shopping trip, carrying bags of supplies for whatever Candlenights gifts they’re going to craft. You change the subject with Dave to something mundane; Rose would catch on to your juvenile crush in a hot second.

The girls are delighted by the hot chocolate, filling their teacups to the brim. Rose smiles at the small bowl of whipped cream.

"Whipped cream? What an indulgence," says Rose, heaping it on her hot chocolate. "Did you burn through some favors with the kitchen staff?"

"I made it," you say. “I think I over-beat it. Peaks are so stiff they’re perfect erections.”

“Wonderful for making an aesthetically pleasing hot chocolate,” says Rose, sitting down. “I wish you made sprinkles, too.”

“I’m not a fucking wizard, Rose.”

Roxy piles her hot chocolate with whipped cream too. "Schnapps?" Dave offers Roxy, holding out the bottle.

"Nah, not feelin’ it," Roxy says, and sits down.

You dig your nails into your chair. Roxy isn’t usually one to decline alcohol. You’re reminded of how squeamish the pregnancy thing makes you, how you maybe, sort of, want to talk to her about it. Talk to her so you stop festering in your feelings. But you go through the same thought cycle at blistering speeds: you don’t want to hurt her or pressure her or accidentally manipulate her or _anything,_ so you have to stay quiet.

Your cousins move onto other topics, and you participate in the conversation, but the back of your head starts working and machinating, drawing connections, seeing how you can game your way through this strange drama. You get this weird fucking idea. One that doesn’t require you to puppet anybody. What if, by taking care of his heir problem, John becomes openly willing to mess around with other men. Particularly with you. It’s kind of a batshit thought, that he could spin on his preferences like that after checking a to-do task off, but this whole situation is batshit. It’s 50% hopeful for your own boner and 50% dead ass depressing.

If that really does turn out to be the case, orgasm inside a girl once and he’s magically unlocked bisexuality, then John Egbert is messed up beyond reason. It would mean he’s… just _that fucking oblivious_ to himself. You could not imagine being so shut away from your own wants and needs that you don’t care to try new things that interest you. You cannot imagine being unhindered by fear or uncertainty, but instead hindered by the sheer unawareness that you want something at all. You cannot imagine drifting through life with a vague mysterious series of tasks that need to be completed in some vague mysterious manner, but having each of those tasks influence you to your very core.

You guess you’ll find out if your thoughts are correct, if he ends up checking off that Heir task. Assuming he hasn’t already.

*******

You’re one of two guards in Jane’s office, where John and Jane are in a heated debate over palace maintenance. It’s a long room, bookshelves lining each wall, a desk parked in the back in front of a large window looking out onto an icy river. John and Jane are behind the desk, you and the other guard are in the front of the room near the door, Vriska is lying face down on the ground like an idiot, bored out of her mind. You think she gets the extra funding if the windows John and Jane are talking about aren’t replaced.

“Do you even _know_ how expensive those gigantic windows are?” says Jane, thwapping a stack of tax reports with the back of her hand.

“Yeah, but like, that one hallway with the chess board tile is looking _so gross,_ like all the lead is seeping into the glass…”

“Nobody important even goes back there!”

“< _You know Jane’s the logical one, right? You’re being obstinate,_ >” says Vriska, into the floor. John doesn’t reply to her.

The door creaks open, revealing one of your coworkers. Unusual that they arrived unannounced. Jane and John cease arguing to look at the visitor. Vriska stands up, interested.

“Sir, someone is here to see you,” says the guard, slowly.

“Not right now, okay?” John says. “I’m kind of busy!”

The guard coughs. "Sir, I think you're going to want to hear this."

John frowns, then waves his hand, a ‘let them in’ gesture. The door closes briefly, then Nepeta Leijon enters, her passion purple Rogue’s bandanna clutched to her chest. John tilts his head, a flat expression on his face, one you can’t read. She doesn’t look at him when she shuts the door behind her, choosing to stare at her feet. 

“Yes?” John prompts.

It’s a few seconds before she is able to stand up straight and speak.

“Sir, the Renounced Empire attacked us using the… um… Vantas.” She takes a deep breath. “And the platoon your father was a part of has been destroyed. They’re all dead, sir.”

John goes very, very still. His mouth is a flat line, pressed thin. "Are there Death Priests on staff? Are there bodies?"

"No recoverable-" You watch her swallow the urge to say 'pawdies.' "-bodies, sir."

John’s mouth twitches. "And my dad?" he murmurs.

Nepeta looks down at the floor. She opens her mouth, shuts it, opens it again. "And your dad," she confirms.

John freezes, like he’s stuck in time. For a second, you can't breathe.

Not from the emotional weight, but from the literal inability to breathe. Your lungs refuse to fill with air, the inhale you were in the midst of does not supply you with any oxygen. Jane, Nepeta, and the other guard all have the same reaction: their eyes pop wide, and they press their fingers to their throat. Vriska doesn't do this, she instead clenches her fists and narrows her eyes at John, like she's ready to spring.

John doesn’t move an inch. You can hear him breathing in the air you’re not allowed, slow, calm, unpanicked. He shuts his eyes, gently, and steeples his hands together at the waist so his thumb and pointer fingers make a diamond shape. His mother used to make that gesture a lot. 

He releases his hold over the breath in the room, his body remaining statuesque. There's a quiet, collective inhale. Oxygen fills your lungs again. 

A soft, caring smile spreads across John’s face. He looks _bemused._ “Huh, okay,” he tells Nepeta. “That’s too bad. Thanks for letting me know!”

Jane clamps both her hands over her mouth. Vriska’s digging her nails into her own thigh. Nepeta is shaking like she’s afraid of the Patrician snapping and chopping off her head. You think you're making the same face as the other guard: your mouth gaping but trying desperately to keep it reigned in.

“Yes, sir,” says Nepeta, with a stunningly steady voice, and face-heel-turns to leave the office. The door clicks shut behind her.

Vriska’s eyes flick between John and the closed door. You know what she’s thinking about: Nepeta just lost a platoon, needs direction, and John didn’t provide any orders. However, she makes an expression you can’t decipher: she smirks for a second, raising an eyebrow like she’s saying ‘we’ll meet again’ to an arch nemesis. Either because she wants an advantage over him or because she genuinely thinks she’s doing the right thing, Vriska leaves the room to go after Nepeta. John lets her go.

“Anyway, where were we?” says the Patrician, in a pleasant voice. “Something about windows.”

“John…” Jane says, horrified, from underneath her clasped palms. “John… are you… alright?”

He blinks at her, confused. “Well yeah, why wouldn’t I be?”

“Because- because,” she stammers, then slowly lowers her hands. “Oh dear.”

Without a single break in his facade, the Patrician jumps right back in to what he was talking about with Jane. Jane looks like she’s doing everything in her power to not grab him by the shoulders and demand he cry, scream, feel sad, something. You wish she would. He doesn’t do anything but the usual. 

He gets what he wants, of course. Jane’s too frazzled to argue her position anymore. The whole time, there’s that pleasant uptick to his mouth, and the more you look at it the more it makes you feel sicker and sicker.

It’s been nagging at you for a while, a ball of worry that’s been growing as you’ve lived here. Jane was right. You can see it now. You didn’t know him before he took power but… This isn’t her cousin.

Something is very wrong with Patrician John Egbert.


	13. Heir of Grief

There is no public day of mourning, as John's father was never a part of the royal family conglomerate, but there's a private memorial service with friends of his father and the who's-who of Porkmor-Kahn.

It feels more like a political social event than anything, with John darting between nobility, socializing and strengthening alliances, not an ounce of weakness or sadness on his face. You watch him under the guise you’re guarding him, watch for a single crack, wet eyes or deep breaths, anything to show he’s human. But there’s nothing. There’s nothing there at all.

In contrast to a ball or some other government inanity, there’s a few odd faces here. The Auctor hangs around, for a while, constantly trying to lose her guards so she can have a private conversation with him, but John doesn’t play along. The Auctor has to leave after a couple hours. Nepeta shows up, to pay her respects. Jane can’t stay for long, the emotional weight is too heavy on her. Vriska's there, hogging the hors d'oeuvres, watching John like she's waiting for something to happen. Whatever it is never happens. John’s prodigal half-sister actually shows her face for once, along with the Vantas who _can’t_ explode people wholesale. 

Jake emerged from his basement hovel for this, and is having a quiet talk with John, arm around his shoulders, the both of them looking jarringly pleased to be there. You’re pretty sure Jake isn’t freaked out at John’s state because he really sucks at reading the room. You're not the only one watching and judging them. There's a peanut gallery across the parlor who are looking at John like…

You don't have any particular station to stay at, so you go join them.

"What the fuck. What the _fuck._ What the fuck is he doing," Dave is mumbling.

"Maybe this is a coping mechanism as part of the mourning process," offers Rose, sounding unsure of herself. "Perhaps he'll allow himself reprieve at the end of this week."

"Coping mechanism my ass," says Karkat. He has a voice that sounds like grains of sand, personified. Odd for a troll, his accent in Common is nearly perfect. "He's trying to bury that shit in a time capsule and open it in the far away century of Never C.E."

"What if I slap him. Like a wake up slap," says Jade, with the kind of tone used when you've been spending twenty hours on a math problem with no sleep and you're at the end of your rope. "Would it help if I slapped him."

"No," says Karkat. "But give it a try, anyway."

Jade gets up to go pull John away from Jake. You hope the slap was a metaphor. Third in line to the throne or not, you'd have to arrest her for assault.

You sit down on the arm of the couch near Karkat. You've never been formally introduced, but you've crossed paths with him a few times due to him taking knight training with Dave, along with Karkat being friends with a massive amount of the upper crust. Your mind always drifts to how you'd be able to beat him if you had to fight him. For professional reasons, of course. You're pretty sure he's one of the few people in the world who could successfully kill the Patrician without mind games. His mutant red troll blood makes him immune to quite literally anything John could pull, sans getting bashed in the head with an unenchanted hammer.

His total magic immunity would shatter almost every single one of your swords on contact, since you script them with minor enchantments for sharpness and whatnot. If he touched your eyes, you believe you'd go permanently blind, so you'd have to avoid head blows. He's apparently not a shabby fighter, either. If you had your Unbreakable Katana, maybe, but that’s stuck in John’s quarters at the moment, and-

"Hey, Strider," says Karkat. "Dave says you're a trustworthy and pure hearted human."

You snap your head to look at him. Apparently Dave and Rose left when you were zoned out in fight-fantasy mode. It's just you and Karkat now, sitting on a couch, with no one around to save you. You sure do love forced social situations.

"Dave's full of shit. I'm neither of those."

He rolls his eyes, over exaggerated. "More of that classic Strider irony, you guys crack me up. He also says you're in John's morally bereft and totalitarian secret police force."

"Yeah, well," you say, feeling extremely disappointed in Dave at this moment. "Did Dave also tell you I’m going to have Jake eviscerate and stuff him in ten minutes?"

"Classic. Strider. Irony." repeats Karkat, dryly. "Anyway, I've got a question for you."

He sits up straight so he can lean at you. You lean away, afraid he might bump heads with you and erase your vision forever. He stares at you with vibrant red eyes, lit neon against a dull yellow background. "If I had a piece of incriminating information that can be used to eject John from that _fucking office,_ could you use it?"

"Are you fucking dumb," you state, more appalled that he had the gall to ask you that question than the actual motive behind it. "I don't even fucking know you. Like. I _will_ have to arrest you for grand treason."

He sneers at you, mockingly, showing off thick, sharp, troll teeth. "I cannot even begin to describe all the ways you wouldn't be able to do that. Anyway, just answer the question."

"It'd have to be something pretty damn horrible, since not only am I honor bound to protect him, I’d like to consider him a friend. But I guess I could be a whistle-blower," you say, suspicious. Because you're a cat playing with a big, shiny knife labeled 'curiosity' you ask, "Why would you want to oust him."

"Because he's my friend too. Look at him," he says, gesturing in John's general direction. John is happily talking to some noble, Jade trying to get his attention but failing at the social graces required to intercept. "I don't know what else to do. He’s breaking apart and he’s not letting anybody put him back together. This Patrician shit is killing him. He _can’t_ keep doing this, can’t keep bottling up all this hot garbage he has to deal with. He’s well on his way to morphing into this total psychopath. And, 'oh hey, Karkat,' you might say to yourself. 'Who cares about his personal well being as long as he's an effective leader!?' Well, fuck right off with that one, you cold-hearted slimebag, because there is _no way_ that shit won't be bleeding over into-" 

He phases into a _really_ bad impression of John here, making his voice nasally and pantomiming pushing fake glasses up his nose with his middle finger. "'hey guys! guess what!? i just discovered a fun new way to get information! ready to pull out some nailbeds? i've got the pliers!'” He shifts out of the caricature to frown. "I'm completely fucking incompetent at government shenanigans, but I have to try to help my friend. I hope to dick I'm doing the right thing. I want to tell you something, and I want you to use it to get him out of there. I want him expelled, impeached, rioted out of office by villagers with pitchforks, usurped by Jane, what the fuck ever. At the very least, blackmail him into taking a fucking vacation. Make him fake having the flu. Anything. Anything to save his life."

Everyone but you is an idiot, sometimes.

Whatever he thinks you’re going to do, it’s woefully shortsighted. He wants John ousted for the sake of his health, but who'd take over? Jane? No. She is so unprepared for the throne it's funny. The people? Government upheaval by violent revolution doesn't tend go well. A council? Perhaps, but you're pro-philosopher king, and John is doing a kickass job on that front so far. Even if Karkat’s stupid edgelord torture prediction comes true, so what? What’s a city-state without some old fashioned information gathering? Not a good one.

He assumes you’re as brave and heroic and loving as Dave. Nah, you can’t hope to ever be as cool as him. You’re keeping whatever Karkat tells you to your own goddamn self, for the sake of stability.

"I'm still probably going to arrest you," you say. "But lay it on me. I might get a kick out of it."

He bites his lip with teeth that could tear through human skin like paper. His voice comes out low, saturated with intrigue.

"Meenah didn't kill John's mother or the Condesce," says Karkat. "This whole succession war is based on a sham."

Not exactly what you expected, but your interest is fucking peaked. It's peaked as hard as the whipped cream you overbeat. You fucking _love_ this stupid conspiracy theory tinfoil hat shit. "What."

“The Patrician and Condy were murdered as part of a power grab machinated by John, Vriska, and Feferi,” he says. “Meenah had nothing to do with it. She made a deal with them, wanted the resulting fakey-fake blame campaign to boost her infamy. Only like, five people know.”

That seems implausible and out of character for everyone involved (sans Vriska). Your eyebrows raise without any input from you. The idea is so absurd it does a double reach-around to complete triteness. But you see how this… rather _dull_ conspiracy theory could oust John from his station: that’s a trifecta of murder, treason, and perjury.

“You’re implying John committed matricide to seize power,” you say. 

“You got it.”

“And how do you know.”

"Because _I_ killed them," says Karkat, putting a hand to his chest, like he’s accusing himself. “Well… sort of. I was dead and controlled by a necromancer at the time.”

“Wonder who that could be.”

“One fucktruck of a mystery, that one,” he says, rolling his eyes. “I was the weapon, Vriska planned and executed the whole fucking coup, and John planted the _idea._ Set up the situation so it was irresistible for Vriska, so she wanted to come in and wreck shit up. Do you get what I’m saying?”

Yes. But at the same time, no. His explanation of the setup is convincing: that _is_ how John rules, by vaguely waving his hand and people he trusts/hires/befriends doing all the actual planning and work. You suspect he’d begin an assassination like this too: depending on other people to do their jobs in just the right way, where the stars align and his wishes come true. As long as there was a chance it wouldn't happen, as long as he could lie to himself and say ‘it's not _my_ fault they're dead, it’s Vriska’s fault!’ Yeah, you could see him taking a hands off approach to orchestrating a permanent death.

But the rest of it? Holy shit, no. Patrician Crocker was an asshole, but she didn’t seem like enough of a bitch to get murdered by her own son. Secondly, while you feel you still have a lot to unearth about John’s character, you know he’s not power hungry, not in that way. You wonder if Karkat doesn’t have any dirt on John at all, and simply fabricated this batshit coup story to try and get him out of office.

You consider getting up and telling John his friend is trying to betray him, right away. But something stops you. That dark part of you, the one you thought you put away after the whole Vriska fiasco, flutters its eyes open. It snuggles up to your ear, licks the shell with its pointy demon tongue, and whispers, ‘This could be useful.’

The urge to tell John leaves you, but not necessarily because of some shitty dark manipulative desires you have. You should maybe wait until after his father’s memorial. Bothering him with his _other_ dead parent would be a little too much, even for you. But you can at least contain the damage. Prevent Karkat from spreading this around to others.

“Yeah, I get what you’re saying,” you say. 

“Not going to make any pathetic and asinine attempts to arrest me?” he says, with this ‘just try it, motherfucker’ kind of tone. “Do you think you could get him… get him somewhere safe?”

“I have to think on it, but yes, absolutely,” you lie, without hesitation.

He sighs, shuts his eyes. “I hope this is the right thing to do. I can’t fucking think of anything else. You have to save him. You _have_ to get him out of here. Jade’s going to try something else, but just in case if that doesn’t go down well…”

Karkat digs into his obi, pulls out a folded piece of paper, and hands it to you. You take it, open it up. It’s a poorly drawn map of two continents: the one you’re currently on, up north, and one across the sea, in dragon territory. A chunk of the remote land mass is circled, clear enough you could find it on a map that isn’t drawn like someone drunkenly carved it into a bar table. You tuck it into your jacket.

“Jade and I are hard to find,” he says, narrowing his eyes. “Address a letter to her and send it that-a-ways if you need us. We’ll be back in the blink of a viewglobe to back you up on this.”

A court or the people wouldn’t take Karkat at his word, but they sure as hell would believe the third in line to the throne. Apparently John’s own sister is planning on betraying him too. That’s dark. That’s an infinite pit of blackness, is what it is. These two idiots think they’re helping? Hell no. This lie could wreck a whole lot of things, John included. You won’t let them fuck it all up.

Good thing they usually stay in a remote location.

Karkat jerks his shoulder up to crack his neck. “Well, thanks for listening, anyway. Don’t fuck it up. But I trust Dave, so I don’t think you will,” he says. “I’m off to headbutt Vriska away from the mortuary themed snack buffet. Fuck her for hogging it, I’m ready to square up.”

You stay perched on the arm of the couch, watch Karkat walk to Vriska, watch him start arguing with her about bad party food. You note that John, still in the midst of a conversation with a noble you don’t know, side-eyes Karkat when he moves. John smoothly ends the chat with the elite merchant, then deflects towards you. He stands over you, black cloak rubbing against your legs like curious kittens. You can’t look at his happy grin, it still makes your stomach churn.

The tone of his voice is pleasant as ever. “Ah, hey, I see you met Karkat. He’s pretty cool, isn’t he? He was almost my Adviser instead of Vriska.”

“Why isn’t he.”

John finally loses that smile he’s been carrying this whole day, looking more contemplative. “It would have killed him,” he says, softly. The smile pops right back onto his face. “Anyway, what were you guys talking about?”

You’re frozen, here. You should tell him, but at the same time, you don’t want to bother him with this right now, and the dark manipulative side of you wants to hang on to the knowledge of friend/family-betrayal as possible leverage. You don’t have to decide, because Jade stomps over, yelling, “Stop avoiding me!”

“I’m not avoiding you, jeez!” says John, whipping around to face her. “You’re just bad at interjecting yourself into conversations! You’re being really rude!”

She lashes out and grabs his hand, then pulls him away from you. John makes no real effort to resist, just whining, “Jade, hey, where are we going?” She drags him through the parlor, then out the main doors and into the hallway. 

You suppose you should follow them. From what you learned with Karkat, they’re willing to go to some serious extremes in an attempt to “save” him. Considering Jade has the ability to teleport just about anywhere, yeah, you should probably make sure she doesn’t kidnap him or some other idiotic shit. You follow them out of the room, quietly. There’s no one in the hall, but you hear loud voices from around the corner to the right.

“Jade, no.”

“Jade, yes!” yells Jade. She sounds angry. “I need to stay, okay!?”

“You’re going to die if you stay here,” says John, raising his voice. “I mean, not literally, you’re super hard to kill, but like, you’re going to hate it so much. You hate being around all these people! You’re going to go stir-crazy after like, a week, and snap and punch an important diplomat in the face when they’re being a dick!”

“That was one time!”

You edge your way towards the corner, to listen. You’re close enough to hear John’s cloak ruffle, you think he’s folding his arms. “I mean, that’s not why I’m preventing you from staying. I’m just not going to let you do something you don’t want. I refuse to make you miserable.”

“I do want to stay, I want to help! It won’t be as bad as before, since Mom isn’t around. I’m not going to abandon-”

“Yes you are,” says John, determined. “I’ll force you to leave, if I have to. You know I can do that.”

You dare to peek around the corner, get a brief a view as you can manage. John’s back is to you, Jade is angled adjacent to you, but you can at least see her face. Her eyes open wide, her ears sink, her mouth a perfect circle of horror. “You’d really…?” She snaps into something angry immediately afterwards. “You need help! You can’t do this by yourself!”

“Can too! I can always make more of me if there’s too many things going on.”

Her expression changes to the horrified one again, but it doesn’t fade this time. She can’t bring herself to recover, her lower lip quivering as though she wants to say something comforting, but instead she just says, in a flat voice, “Oh, fuck.”

John chuckles. “Jade, you have been hanging out with Karkat for _way_ too long.”

Jade’s shocked by this reveal. Her reaction tells you something important: he never used to use his retcon abilities, or at least, only used them in extreme circumstances. And with the severe way she’s emoting you can infer that, in the past, he might have suggested he wasn’t _ever_ going to use them. She stamps her foot down, clenches her fists, and says with a shaking voice, “How often do you use those… those weird powers?”

“Dunno, every other day, maybe. I off my fake selves in the evenings,” says John, shrugging. Jade makes a choking noise. “Is something wrong, Jade?”

“Are you the only John right now!?”

“Well, yeah. Nothing to do but the memorial.”

Jade lets out a sob, then flings her arms around him, gives him a hug so tight it looks like she’s going to merge into him. His cloak enfolds her. He returns the hug, rubs her back with one hand. He tilts his head towards her, presses his cheek to her hair. He murmurs, “Hey, hey, it’s okay…”

"I didn't know," she sobs. "I'm sorry, I'm so stupid, I'm so so _so_ stupid, I'm- I should never have left you all alone. I didn't know, I didn't know-"

“You’re not stupid, Jade. I’m fine, I promise.”

You feel bitter, sick with yourself, distaste that you’re eavesdropping on a moment that should remain private between family members. You shouldn’t watch this anymore. You’ve seen enough. 

You leave silently.


	14. shit. lets be santa

Days pass. A week. There’s no crash, there’s no depression, there’s no break in his schedules, there’s nothing. The only thing that changes is that he stops inviting you to dinner, which really puts a hamper on your Unbreakable Katana reclaiming. It also puts a hamper on your conversations with him, so you cannot tell him about what Karkat told you. 

Whatever he threatened them with worked; Jade and Karkat don’t hang around the palace for long. You suppose they’re dependent on your non-existent belief that Karkat was actually telling the truth and you won’t report him to John. Tough luck. You memorize the map of their location and burn it.

You figure John's just busy with the end of year shit. Since your source of intrigue is cut off by the holiday, your free time leading up to Candlenights is spent with your family. It’s distracting. It’s hard to distantly mope about John’s well-being when you’re surrounded by people who love and understand you. You do fun winter activities. You’re remarkably invested in them.

Dave insists on having that snowball fight in the town square after a particularly blizzardy day. It’s you and Rose versus Dave and Roxy. As soon as the rival team teleport/flashsteps into complete invisibility, you and Rose both turn to stare at each other.

“On second analysis, I find this team arrangement rather unfair,” says Rose, frowning.

“Can you drastically hone your visions of the future down to angle, trajectory, and air speed of the vicious snowballs about to clip our heads off? I think we have a chance if you get your prophetic calculus on.”

“You know math is my worst sub-”

Rose is slammed in the face with a snowball, materializing from a void portal on the nearest building. She topples to the ground, squealing, a fallen comrade, the dead unmourned. You whip around, but you’re too late. Dave is tackling you to the snow, knees on your chest, a deadly weapon of ice packed into his mitten.

He rips off his shades. The glass unsticks from his skin, thick black fluid flows from his tear ducts. Hollow eye-shaped voids stare at you, a hypnotic, hellish red flame flickering distantly in the center of them, a grotesque parody of an iris.

“Surprise, bitch,” he gargles with a raspy caricature of his voice, and proceeds to shove snow down the front of your shirt. You may or may not scream very loudly.

Besides for family shenanigans, you get some personal Self-Care time. You take a break from learning Alternian to do a variety of other activities in your bathtub: light some candles, paint your nails with red and green stripes, make some new jewelry, drink whatever old tea is left over in the barracks, read a textbook on theoretical linear algebra and its relation to parallax vision mechanics cover-to-cover, put cucumbers over your eyes and stress about mortality, that kind of shit. 

You have a hookup with one of your coworkers, as a Candlenights present to yourself. You want it rough, and boy, does this guy deliver. You get slapped, bit, and bruised, and do your fair share of roughhousing right back at him. You don't think of John, but you do think of the frustration you feel, how you don't know what to do about John, how you want him and want him to feel better, two conflicting ideals in your mind. You channel all that into some Extreme Sexual Potency.

You have a nice time. You make the guy breakfast in one of the common area kitchens. Scrambled eggs with some cervelat that was sitting around. He's floored that you, Dirk Strider, did that, even though they turned out mediocre. He seems pleased with more than just the sex when he leaves you, which is different than normal. 

You don’t stress about Candlenights. Well, no more than usual, anyway. You have, of course, been preparing your handcrafted gifts for months. You fucking love Candlenights, because it gives you an excuse to turn into a basement dwelling craft hoarder instead of going out on Friday nights like a normal person. You tend to get carried away with your gifts.

You made Roxy a chubby kitty stuffed animal, with a tiny pink wizard hat. It casts a itty-bitty rainbow sparkle spell if you clap its tubby paws together. You made a matching one for Rose, except you inscribed Dark Majyyk Poeyyms on its tummy that will send Rose into the violent retches of the nether-throes if she reads them aloud three times to the mirror and hops on one leg. You figured she'd appreciate puzzling out what it does.

You got Dave a pair of polished quartz shades. His old pair is scratched up and crusty from the fluid buildup, and you spent quite a bit of your savings custom ordering him a high quality, last-for-ten-years pair with filtration. However, the glasses are sewn deep in the cottony nether regions of a puppet you made specifically for the purpose of being ripped in half through its pucker hole. You cannot wait to see him fist this thing into oblivion to get his present. While screaming at the top of his lungs. Happy fucking Candlenights to you.

You made Jane an edited collection of this year's Detective Pony serials, as per usual. She likes them, for reasons unknown to you. You made three drafts of the narrative, each one increasingly cyclical and self referential to the other two drafts, interwoven allegorically and physically through textual splicing until the whole trilogy compiles into an ergodic art piece. You poked at it to try to make it more manageable, or at least tried to cut it down to one manuscript, but you gave up and gifted her all three. You wrap it all up in a deceitfully innocent box. With a nice pink bow. And glitter.

John you had less time on, since you didn't know you'd be this chummy with him until a month ago, and even then you might have chickened out of getting him a gift unless you weren't 100% sure he'll be giving you one. He can't _not_ give you a gift, the dude is so friendly he'd probably have a heart attack if he didn't give you something.

You decided to make him a soulbound weapon. He prefers them to physical weaponry. You believe he has a whole arsenal of giant magical hammers he keeps on his person in case he needs to smash someone into a convenient pancake-shaped size.

You're a good metaphysical smith, but you can't compete with any of the centuries-old artifacts or masterpieces of weaponry the Patrician's office has on hand. So you make him an _extremely shitty hammer._ It's basically two dimensional. The head is shaped like a gerrymandered kingdom district. The handle looks kind of vaguely like a dildo, but not like, too much like a dildo. Just a hint of dildo. It makes a squeaky toy noise whenever you hit something with it. It does -.03 damage on every hit. The casting lasts for thirty hours but can be dispelled by the summoner letting go of it, where it will raise slowly to the ceiling over the course of fifteen minutes, vanish with poor flickering transitions, and the watermark 'DECIMATED' will shimmer in its place for a good thirty seconds. You named it "HAMM, OR?". The name is inscribed across the head of it, with a picture of a ham hock you drew with your eyes closed.

You bind it to a silver ring, of mundane appearance. Which you smithed by hand, obviously. You hope you got the size right. You give the small box to Jane and trust her to deliver the present. She's spending Candlenights with John and Jake. In return, she gives you a thin, narrow package from John. You decide to wait until the Candle Night to open it.

You spend it in Rose and Dave’s guest apartment, gorging yourself on roast duck, rice pudding, eggnog, spiked eggnog, and double spiked eggnog. You haven’t mentally lost yourself in holiday cheer quite enough, so you notice that Roxy _is_ drinking the spiked stuff. So, not pregnant. (Yet.) You’re hit with a weird wave of relief you try to drown in bourbon and egg whites. 

“Man, I love you guys,” Roxy says, her mouth full of duck wing. “But I gotta say, this is all hells of weird spendin’ 12th Perigee’s Eve with my fam. In Alternia, only grubs did that. I usually spent it with Meenah. We like, got up to all sorts of shenanigans. Fucked with couples goin’ for romantic snowy walks and such. I miss that a lot.” She frowns. “Wish I could spend some more romantic one-on-one time with- with somebody.”

You raise an eyebrow. “You’d need a partner to do that, Roxy.”

She giggles. “Oh, yup, you’re right, I forget. Roxy’s single 4ever. I delude myself sometimes into thinkin’ I’m hot shit.”

“You are _such_ hot shit,” says Dave, through his mug of eggnog. Roxy punches him lovingly in the shoulder.

You open gifts after dinner. Your gifts to them go over as well as you expect, which gives you the warm fuzzies. You get a really cool new blindfold from Roxy with cubist gold embroidery along the edges, a five volume epic comic from Dave which you’re jazzed about, and some toasty warm fingerless knitted gloves from Rose, in your favorite colors. You open up Jane’s gift too, which turns out to be an annotated cookbook, a heavy focus on baking and desserts. The binding is broken in, every recipe has comments from her on it, which is both very sweet of her and sort of hilarious. You bet she’s having some kind of dick measuring contest with John to see who can win you over with their culinary technique education. You’ll have to try making cinnamon rolls for her.

You save John’s for last. He gifted you a set of pencils in a leather case. It’s a extremely expensive set of pencils, 9H to 9B, every combination of the graphite rainbow. It’s an excellent gift, you’re pleased as punch he remembered your hobbies.

He included a letter along with it. There is a really bad drawing of a horse in the upper right hand corner with an arrow drawn to it and “this sucks” written underneath it. It takes you about a minute to figure out it’s a horse. It’s beautiful.

"dear dirk,

okay this is kind of a shitty gift, i mean, pencils = art, wow, what an unoriginal idea. i don’t even know if you use pencils, what if you’re some kind of oil painting master who turns his nose up at such primitive art supplies? or what if you only use abstract avant garde materials? you would totally be the type who would paint with their… moon blood, or something. yuck!

but then i figured that since you write a lot of letters, even if you don’t use these for art, you can use it for stationary stuff. but i do hope you end up using these for creative things.

show me some of your drawings sometime! and that’s an order.

happy candlenights!  
~ john

p.s. i still owe you a birthday gift. don't think i've forgotten!"

You feel all warm inside, like you got some eggnog lodged in your lungs. 

You try not to think about that, and instead think of the _possibilities._ You should draw him hardcore centaur pornography sometime. See if he frames it.

You crash in the apartment, sharing a bed with Rose, who puts a barrier of pillows between the two of you and calls it “The Trench.” Because you constantly war over the middle of the bed the whole fucking night. Not physically fight, more like, play elaborate games of mind chess by trying to distract each other and gain more blanket purchase. Roxy finds you both in the morning, you the sole victor of two whole pillows, Rose’s cold-ass feet shoved under your spine as petty vengeance.

They leave Porkmor-Kahn the next day. Rose and Dave depart to tearful goodbyes from Roxy, who accidentally opens a portal underneath all four of you from how hard she’s sobbing. You’re not happy to see them go either. They say they’ll plan to visit in the summer, but until then they’ll be busy cornering the market with Rose’s fortune telling and ailment curing gig in whatever smallish city they decide to camp out in this year. Rose and Dave are ruthless business moguls. You love them so much.

You don’t see John much after the holiday. You still don’t receive any dinner invitations. You figure he’s busy with the usual winter festivals and ceremonies in the city he needs to be present for. You wonder if it hurts him, to put on a smile for the people after going through the holidays without a loved one. Or you wonder if he’s truly suppressed all that pain.

You briefly lie to yourself and believe that _you’d_ be able to suppress it and do your job at full function, but then you imagine Rose or Roxy or Dave dying right before Candlenights and… no. You couldn’t do it. If John is truly pushing down the mourning and sadness then he is god tier powerful. And while you respect that, you're at least self-aware enough to know that it isn't right.

He thanks you for the gift you gave him a few days after Candlenights, after a council meeting. He thanks you _again_ the day after when you meet in a hallway, with the exact same phrasing.

“Thanks so much for the hammer, I laughed harder than I have in a long time,” he says, happily. Same facial expressions as before, too. “I did get you something, right?”

“You gave me pencils,” you say. “And you’ve already thanked me.”

"Did I? Oh, sorry. I am really appreciative though, I think I even shed a tear."

He said that before too, but you don't mention this.

You infer that the alpha John wasn't the one who thanked you. Or wasn’t even the one who bought and/or sent the gift off. It's the first time you've been an explicit recipient of the beta John retcon antics. At least the first time you've noticed it, anyway, but you don't think that sort of thing would slip by your feline sharpness.

You wonder if he's getting tired of remembering you.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> what a wholesome chapter! but wait, what's that? do you hear that sound? that's the sound of me, rubbing my calloused hands together, in malicious glee for the next chapter


	15. Limerence

You really need your Unbreakable Katana back. The other katanas in your icebox are mostly just shitty swords with the strength and reliability of toothpicks. One splits down the middle when you’re sparring with Roxy. One cracks when you’re using it to get a foothold on some bricks as you scale up a wall. One breaks off near the hilt during a heated battle with an assassin, and you end up stabbing the woman with your broken sword anyway, a thing Dave taught you how to do.

You foolishly hoped John would begin inviting you to dinner again after the holidays. This hasn’t happened. You catch him in private, after his lunch with some dignitary or another, and ask if you can go into his foyer to grab your katana. John, for some ineffable reason, looks horrified by your question.

“Uhhhhhhhh, no,” he says.

“What.” You didn’t expect him to say no. “I’ve been all over your quarters. What possible reason could you-”

“Not until I… at least another week maybe? I dunno. I’ll see if I have time to grab it for you. I’m really sorry! I just have a lot of stuff on my mind. You can go to the quarter master and get another?”

You cannot go to the quartermaster and get another. That is a unique, imported katana, dammit. You need this sword to do your job effectively, and you don’t like carrying around two extra swords in case if the first one breaks. You say all of this to him without the harsh tone.

John scans your face for a while. “Actually…” he says, getting one of those grins like he’s about to pull a wicked prank. “Why don’t you go in without me? Here’s a key. This one opens all the doors in that sitting room hallway and the hallway leading to the roof. All the doors. All. The. Doors.”

He fishes in the great mass of his black robes and pulls out a simple white skeleton key. You take it from him. “Why do I need a key? Your systems have to allow remote entrance.”

“Because,” he says, and he pauses to wink. “I don’t want to get pinged when you barge into my foyer! It’s annoying.”

He walks away before you can ask any more questions. You hope he hasn’t prepared some kind of juvenile trap for you, a la, bucket of water suspended over the door. You wouldn’t put it past him. 

But you don’t think the emphasis on ‘all the doors’ was for a prank. There is no fucking way he wasn’t trying to plant an idea in your head. You think he wants you to stray off the designated path, for some reason. You can’t say that it’s not tempting. The possibility of going through his private space is goddamn juicy, a real slow cooked tenderloin.

You decide to enter his foyer as soon as humanly possible; you really want your sword back. You head over there at Mach speed, scan the door for a keyhole, see none, and just press the tip of the key to the flat of the wood and brass. There’s a flicker of white light all over the door, and it clicks open for you.

You retrace the path to the sitting room in the long, empty halls. You’re struck by how lonely it feels without him. For how big this area is, and for how bustling and busy and full of life the rest of the palace is, there’s never anybody back here. It’s so quiet. You wonder if any maids ever come in. They must have designated shift times or something, since the place is so clean you could eat off of any surface in it. You’re also surprised by how not-cold it is, considering there aren’t any fireplaces lit. It’s a bit chilly as you step through the rooms, but nothing compared to if you forget to light the fireplace in your own icicle dungeon of a bedroom.

If you come to a closed door, you open it with your key. No buckets fall on your head by the time you make it to the sitting room. Your sword is still behind the chair where you left it. You pick it up and kiss the hilt of it like it’s your forlorn lover returning from war. You strap it to your waist, and turn back.

Now, moment of truth. He wants you to do something on your own, clearly, and it’s your duty to follow through. You’ve been baited, and boy, have you chomped down on that hook. 

There is a dark part of you, one you like to keep shoved in yet another metaphorical corner of your mind locker, that loves infringing on people's privacy. The disrespecting Dirk. The Dirk with a fetish for getting up and cozy with other people's secrets. The Dirk who wants more strings to pull on people so he can _fix_ them.

You have, through the years, managed to wrangle that shitty Dirk into submission after so many of your "fixes" fucked everything right the hell up. But sometimes, when the stars align, you can't resist yourself. This is one of those times. He’s given you a get out of jail free ticket. To say you’re tempted is an understatement. You are a starving man presented with a roasted suckling pig.

You’ve got the means and possibly implied permission to snoop around his living space. Hell. Fucking. Yes. You’re going straight to his fucking bedroom. You want to see how he decorates, how clean he is, what it smells like.

The simple white door to his bedroom is closed, this time. You stop in front of it and stare. It was open when you walked by it the night on the roof. 

The back of your head starts to itch when you look at it. The key feels heavy in your hand. Something feels off, but you don’t trust oblique gut feelings of uncertain origin, so you force yourself to go through with it anyway.

This one’s got a keyhole, black metal under a crystal doorknob. You fit the key inside, turn it. It clicks, and you push it open. Light from the hall shines in on a pitch black bedroom. You saw windows in here before— they must be drawn shut, with heavy curtains.

It smells unwashed, stuffy. Like old food. Like sweat stained clothes. Like bodies, like him. It makes your skin crawl, partly from how unaired and unclean it all seems and partly from how you viscerally enjoy his smell. That's a fuckin' nice thing to know about yourself. Are you going to package all his dirty laundry in a paper bag and huff l'eau de John in your free time? It wouldn't be the weirdest thing you've ever done.

You don't step inside. The hairs raise on the back of your neck. John is out, you know he's out, he's doing heraldic visitation with the merchant guild. But you get this thought, this idea, that makes your skin goddamn warble with how furiously it's crawling. He wouldn't. He _wouldn't._

"John," you call out, anyway. "John, it's Dirk. Are you here?"

There's a rustle of movement, and your heart sinks into a bottomless pit.

"Ah," says a quiet voice. "You used my name."

You're too obsessed with his condition to beat yourself up about that slip, to regret what you're about to do. Later. Not when your heart is throbbing in a way it hasn't for years. You cannot leave him.

You enter the room without permission, shut the door behind you. You're trained to navigate in the dark, so it's not difficult to find the source of his voice. You step over a pile of clothes, kick aside some discarded shoes, and find his bed. You can barely see it in the dim, shuttered light, so you trace your fingers along the edge until you feel the top of his sheets.

You see a John-sized lump of black, rolled on his side, facing away from you. You think the bed is quite large, he's in the dead center of it. Running on autopilot, running on your frankly annoying urge of caring so hard it borders on insanity, you say, "How long have you been here?"

He makes a movement —you hear the shift of sheets— which you think is a shrug.

You want to reach out and touch him. You keep that urge under lock and key. You continue talking without permission. “So. You're the 'real' John. The others are just copies.”

The concept is fucking insane. His dad died. He gets depressed. He forces himself to push it down. He doesn’t get time to recover. He can't get out of bed in the morning. So he duplicates himself and his clone has to go out there and give 110%, despite being in the exact same state of mind as the Alpha John. And that clone is probably only able to do such a mind-destroying task with the knowledge he's 'irrelevant,' that he will die in a couple hours.

"You've found me out," says John, into the pillow. He sounds like he's trying to be lighthearted about it. He moves the sheet over. "Might have to kill you now, heh. Unless you come to bed with me."

Your kneejerk reaction is to blurt out 'what the fuck' and your militaristic reaction is to blurt out 'is that an order, sir?' and you decide saying either of those would be a bad idea. You are greedy enough to do what he asks. You sit on the edge of the bed, take off your sword, your shoes, your sash, your scarf, your coat, arrange them and put them aside, and crawl under the covers with the leader of the human empire.

He turns on his side to face you, although you can barely tell in the dark. From a place of both empathy and hunger, you do not hesitate to get close to him. You lay on your side, to watch the black outline of him shift, to rest your head on fine pillows that smell overwhelmingly like him.

You are overcome with the desire to hold him. Thick, saccharine compassion washes over you, but you don't act on it. You're afraid there's too much lust mixed into that, that if he's in a vulnerable state you might push him too far.

But it feels unkind and wrong to not touch him. You reach for him, under the sheets. You dare to rest your hand on his waist, to feel the slight rise and fall of his body as he breathes. He does not complain. You resist the overwhelming urge to push your palm up under his shirt and feel skin, to run your fingers up his back and soothe him. Not here. Not now.

“Are you okay?” you mumble, and then inwardly curse yourself because no, he’s clearly not okay.

“Yeah, I’m fine?” he says, dimly, like he’s confused you’re asking. “I laze around in bed sometimes. Hey, did another me let you in here?” 

When he talks, it's the first time where the uncleanliness is actually bad enough to marathon high jump over your boner and just be disgusting. His breath has this rotten, fetid smell to it, the repulsive acidic breath you get when you neglect basic self-care tasks. You shift your head towards the pillow to avoid it.

“John,” you say, your voice cracking. “John, this isn’t just, fucking, lazing around. It-”

“He did, right? Hey, come closer.”

You shut up as he reaches out to pull you towards him by your waist. When you’re close enough for his liking, he puts his hand to your neck, thumb and fingers gently encapsulating your throat, stroking a fragile and sensitive part of you. You fucking _burn_. You ache for more. It takes all you have not to start shivering at the brush of his fingertips.

You are torn between letting him do whatever he wants to you and telling him no. You should be saying no, helping him get out of bed and get clean and get him up, but gods, this is satisfying. Frozen by indecision, you de facto choose the first option. You let him touch.

"Feferi said you have a crush on me," says John, and suddenly all your organs feel like they're going to crawl up your throat. "I think she's onto something, right?"

You cannot say one fucking word. You are _mortified._

"Tell me if I'm wrong. But… I'm curious," he says. "Really curious about you, Dirk."

John paps around to find the side of your face, presses a feverish thumb to your industrial piercing. Which is extremely unsanitary and you're going to have to wash that out like it's unholy, but, goddess, you can't stop him. You are swarming with butterflies, they're oozing out of your pores, you're going to curl up and die with how nervous his touch makes you feel. He slides up, along the bar, then along your ear, and his fingers pry up the edges of your blindfold. And nope, no, you are not letting him see what’s in your eye sockets. Not even here.

You catch his wrist. And because you're a fucking _idiot_ who gets flustered by a dude poking your ear, you say something without a filter. “Are you trying to manipulate me to get me to show you my eyes.”

That makes him hesitate. He doesn't move. All your butterflies die in a tragic bug genocide. He tugs his hand away from you and says, "Uhhhh…"

You’re at least brought back to clarity. You make a choice: you’re getting him out of bed. Whatever it takes. It’s a miracle if you’re not going to be fired after this. “Joke’s on you, I have no emotions.”

John half-assedly laughs. “Oh come on, I know that’s not true.”

“Nevertheless, if you’re making the sad attempt to play with my non-existent feelings,” you say, turning your head further into the pillow. “At least brush your teeth first.”

“Why?”

“You smell,” you say. “Also, think pragmatically: every time you clone yourself your clone has to pick up the slack and do all the self-care chores you’ve neglected. It makes everything more efficient if you make changes at the spawn point.”

He groans. “I guess you’re right.”

You sit up, slide your hand along his arm thrown across your waist, and pull on him to try to get him up. The heavy motherfucker refuses to move.

"John," you say. "Get up."

He makes a non-committal noise, like, “Muhhh.”

You sigh, run a hand through your hair. "Look, I'll bring you back to bed after this. You just have to get up and brush your teeth. That's it. That’s all you have to do. I swear if you don't brush your teeth you're going to kill everything in a hundred foot radius from sheer noxious fumes, and that includes me."

He shifts and tries to jokingly breathe on you, but you shove his face away with your palm before he can get all up in your business. "… You're no fun," he groans, then sits up.

He doesn't flop back down to bed. Convinced this is a good enough start, you get out of his bed and pap around the walls to where you remember the windows being. You find the curtains, and edge them open just a little, so a small bit of sunny blue light filters through.

Your vision doesn't need to adjust, so you turn back to John, who is rubbing his eyes in the dim light. He doesn't appear horribly malnourished or as sick as you thought he might look-- he's just got a bad case of bedhead and a fairly hefty five o'clock shadow. He blinks, drowsily, at you, which is where you can tell he isn't well. His eyes are missing the alertness, the vitality, of the John that gave you the key just an hour ago.

"How long has it been since you've shaved?" you ask, hoping to get a more concrete answer as to how long he's been here.

He rubs his chin. "Ummm, I don't know, a couple days?"

That looks like more than a couple days. Although admittedly you have no real concept of how facial hair works. Assuming he's telling the truth, that means he’s been getting up to move around and eat and clean up sometimes, or he might even go through multi-day cycles of wellness and being bedridden. On top of that, there are a few dirty plates on his bedside table. The topmost one looks fairly recent, like from this morning-recent, so you deduce even like this he can at least feed himself regularly.

You take his glasses from the table and offer them to him. When he doesn’t reach out to take them, you adjust the frame and slide them gently onto his face. His eyes open a little wider, with the briefest hint of surprise. You offer your hands to him.

“Come on,” you say, as kind as you can manage. “Get up.”

He places his palms in yours, and you pull. He doesn’t stand up, not exactly, he _floats._ Casts some remarkably difficult, takes-ten-years-to-master flight spell so his feet don’t have to touch the floor. He hovers next to you, bowed sharply at the waist, his long arms dangling straight down, his knees bent. He’s wearing an extremely loose cotton shirt and drawstring pants, so the way he’s positioned exposes some exceedingly choice pectorals.

This feeling comes over you, that you need to stay with him. Not just because you want to ogle his musculature, but because you theorize he won't brush his god-dammed teeth if you don't harp on him, not to mention other clean up tasks. He got out of bed because of you. He'll do the rest because of you. You're going to force him.

You don’t need to verbally coax him along-- he’s featherlight while midair, going whatever direction you want with just a push of your hand. You keep your palm on his back, guiding him. He gives you some tired, slow directions to where the master bathroom is, and you steer him there.

The bathroom is three rooms. The one you enter is narrow and contains a wash basin and unfilled pitcher, a large mirror in a wooden frame, and some shelves for his personal utilities. To the left is a closed door which you assume contains boring toilet stuff, and to the right is a door left ajar, providing a tantalizing view of the best fucking bathing room you have ever seen in your life. You're suddenly considering dismantling the patriciate system and distributing the wealth so you can have one of these: eat the rich, take one hell of a bath.

"I'm drawing you a bath," you say, suddenly.

“Augh, god, what?” he moans. “You’re making me do more stuff? You tricked me.”

You ignore him. "You should shave while I do that."

"Dude, no, that'll hurt my beautiful smooth face. You're supposed to shave _after_ you get all nice and steamy," he says, blinking blearily at you. "Do you… not know that? Wait, can you even grow a beard? Are you just… super smooth everywhere under your eyebrows?"

You know you shouldn't, but you fold your arms and ask, dryly, "Want to find out."

He doesn't appear to register this, and instead folds his eyebrows down, like he's thinking hard. "I bet you only grow hair up top. I saw you engage in fisticuffs that one time and your chest was so blemishless it sparkled."

You sigh. "Whatever. Brush your teeth. I'll be right back."

You grab the pitcher off the shelf to fill up for him before stepping inside. Your breath is stolen from you by how _sicknasty_ this bath is. You nearly shed a blackened tear.

It's one of the proper ones, the kind where there's a large space to wash yourself before stepping into the bath for a soak. There's a short stool to sit on, some wooden washbasins, a plain angled mirror, and some soap shoved to the side. The centerpiece is the bathtub in the back of the room, which is made of stone and spans the length of the entire wall. It's set into the floor like a pool as opposed to raised like your own inferior bath. The floor surrounding it is wooden and ridged, angled so the water from your wash and overflow from the tub will run off to drains on the sides. A skylight on the slanted roof lets the light from a bright winter's afternoon in.

The water pump is set into the wall above the bath, easily accessible even if you're not stepping in for a soak. There's some very elaborate enchantments carved into the water outlet that control temperature and water speed. You remember how long yours took to DIY install in your bathroom, a couple months, maybe, and marvel at how expensive this must have been to hire a fuckin'… plumber mage to do this.

You follow the enchantment and twist your fingers midair to start the water flow, switch it to lukewarm to fill up the pitcher. John's followed you in, still bent over and hovering above the wood floor.

"Wait, so, I'm still stuck on this," he says, behind you. "Does this mean you can't grow a mustache?"

"Why do you sound so offended," you say, pulling the pitcher back when it's full. You twist your fingers to turn the water to hot, at the exact temperature you favor. "I want you to close your eyes and imagine me with a thick, blond handlebar mustache. Really think about it. Keep that picture in your head. Okay, have you captured my likeness? Have you burned that into your eyelids? Good. So tell me why the _fuck_ I would even _consider_ willingly cultivating that on my face."

He gives you these fake-weepy eyes, taking the pitcher from you. "Because mustaches are awesome. I'd totally grow one if I wasn't going to look like a disheveled dog for four months."

You grimace. "Please don't grow a mustache, sir."

John loses whatever good humor he had, his face shifting into a neutral expression. "My name is John," he says, flat, with the barest hint of anger behind it, and floats out of the bathing room with the pitcher.

You fucked up there. You let him leave, pay attention to the water falling into the bath. You need to define that line between 'sir' and 'John' more clearly. You have a force of habit, a fear of intimacy, and that's hard to get over. You think he got mad at you there because if you call him 'sir,' you're positioning yourself as subservient, only doing this for him because it's your job as opposed to you being genuinely considerate of his well being.

You _would_ like to pretend you're only doing this because of your job, but you know deep down you are going out of your way to help him because you care about him, because he's your friend, because you want to bang him, and because his bathroom is fucking awesome. You fear the 'caring' bit. It means you're getting attached, which means you're going to fuck him up somehow.

Although… what's left of him to fuck up, now that you’ve seen this? What could you possibly do to break him further? Knowing you, you're sure you'll find something, but nothing comes to mind immediately.

You bite your lip before swallowing your pride, calling out, "Hey, John?"

"Hmm?" he replies, his mouth full.

"I apologize. I- It's a habit. I blend the work/life balance shit all the time."

You hear him spit. He moseys into the bathing room, feet on the ground this time. He took his shirt off at some point, and you are very thankful for your unique optical situation, because your eyes are wandering down that manscaped treasure trail and they no intention of turning back.

"Aw, don't worry about it, it happens to me pretty often," he says, making a half-hearted attempt at a grin and leaning against the doorframe. His eyes flick to the bath, to the washbasins, then to you. "Hey, you know if you fill that up any more, it will overflow when the both of us get in…"

Instant. Fucking. Erection. You shut the water off with a snap of your fingers that you go at so hard it's painful. You're mildly embarrassed to note that you're not motivated by sex or John erotica or even making sure he’ll be alright taking a bath, but instead by _that lascivious tub._ You reach for the hem of your shirt to yank it off.

You hear the main bathroom door open, and you freeze. The other John, the one that gave you the key, pokes his head around the doorframe, eyes bright. "Oh, hey! I was looking for you two! So, Dirk, can I talk to you for a bit? I need you to do something for me." He glances at his other self. "Are you using him for anything?"

"Nope!" says the shirtless John, grinning a little wider. "He's all yours."

You cannot believe he just let himself bathblock you. To say you're disappointed is an immense understatement. You suppose you can't smartmouth him, he's in his Patrician's robe and the John in "friend mode" is backing him up. You exit the bathing room. Shirtless John shuts the door behind you, presumably to start the washing process alone. Tragic. 

The Patrician John beams at you, apparently ready to have a nice normal chat with you in the bathroom entryway. It’s such a contrast to the John you found in a depressive heap in bed that you wonder if their “clone point” was weeks and weeks ago. But then you see it, and you understand.

He's trembling. His hands, when they aren't folded under his arms or resting on his hips, have a visible shake to them, like something is threatening to tear his body apart from the inside. His face, already naturally pale, is now a cold corpse white, like your fingers would freeze off if you touched him. His eyes look wet, like he's a third of the way to tears. You now notice there are a couple small pink nicks on his neck and chin, from an unsteady grip.

These John clones can’t last more than a couple hours. Suppressing the kind of infinite sadness you saw in his bedroom takes a distorted and grotesque strength, and comes with a heavy cost. He came back here to die.

“Woooooooow Dirk, you entered my bedroom and tooooooootally misused my key?” His voice is the same, as sweet and eager and confident as usual. He waggles his eyebrows, over exaggerated. “How daaaaaaaare you!”

You glare at him. “For a godtier politician, you’re a horrible liar.”

“Lying? Me? Noooooooo,” he says, winking three times at you.

You sigh. "Am I just here to be berated, or…"

“Nope! I want you to do something for me!”

“An order, sir?”

“An order, sir!” he confirms, happily.

He spreads his arms out towards you, like he’s showing off the bathroom. His hands are rock steady now, his grin earnest. His robe billows in your direction, not quite encompassing you. He says it slowly, savoring each word as it leaves his mouth.

“Escort me to Death, Soulwalker.”


	16. Even in Death

You have only ever walked a suicidal being to Death once, which is how you found out you could take the souls of the willing. It was a cursed old man. He was magically trapped in a ruined castle in your assigned field area, doomed to rot away in eternity without dying. You ripped his soul free, took him by the hand, and led him to his final end. It felt right. You don’t ever want to do it again.

“Why?” you say, frowning.

"Because death isn't so bad when you're with a friend," he says.

God. Okay, fuck, you can’t _not_ do it when he says it like that. 

Walking him to the Lady and Lord is an easy process. You give him a rundown of the rules and provide him with a brief overview of what he’s going to experience, which he eagerly laps up. He beams at you when you reach out for his chest.

There is nothing more eerie to you than feeling the pull of a soul that wants to die. It's like slipping your arms into a pool of chilled oil and diving into it, the weight of suffering filling your lungs instead of air. It's got a certain tug to it, an unmistakable feeling of horrific desire that calls out to your heart. You take a deep breath, tap your fingers to John's chest, and —in essence— murder him in cold blood. You tug out the strands of his soul like you’re wrenching a newly smithed sword from ice cold water. His body vanishes into a burst of white light. You pop the orb of his soul into your eye right away.

"Did you off me?" calls John through the bathing room door, casually. You jolt from the unexpected sound of his voice.

"I… I guess? Please don't call it that," you call back. "I've been asked to escort you- him- the soul to Death."

"Oh, awesome! Have fun! Let me know what happens!"

You wait a couple seconds in case if he has any other psychologically concerning comments to make, then regain your concentration. You shut your eyes, clench your fists, focus on the absolute darkness that lives behind your lids. It’s easy as anything to transition into it— all you feel is a slight temperature adjustment towards lukewarm, and you know you’re not in your real body anymore. You open your eyes. True blackness surrounds you. You turn on your heels to face John.

You always wonder how the lighting works in this place, because you can see him and his Patrician’s robe and your own body very clearly, but the surroundings around you contain no light whatsoever. You’ve never quite figured out where _this_ is, because it’s not quite Death’s domain yet. Close, but not there. You’ve theorized you’re in your own head, due to some strange abilities you have here.

“This isn’t really what I expected!” says John, looking around like he’s a kid at the county fair. His cloak billows excitedly. “Where are we?”

"The desolate, empty box of imagination land," you say, gesturing at the infinite blackness around you. "The land of dreams and make believe. I can make random shit appear if thou so desirest it."

"Make me a pony."

"Yeah I wish, but no, I can’t just make any random shit, you have to be selective. More like. Utilitarian shit. Like tables and chairs and stuff."

To demonstrate, you make a table and chairs appear. You don’t have to think too hard about it. A plain brown table with plain brown chairs of no intrinsic sentimental or historical value pop into existence in front of you. You once spent a couple hours in here trying to make your utilitarian summonings have like, colors or a pattern or something, but your powers of creation are apparently exclusive to boring beige.

John stares at the set. "This is a… really weird feature to have. Like… uh… why…? Why?"

"I don't know. Forgive me for not exploring every random mental crevice of the corridor that leads to mortal doom. That'd be kind of a dumb decision, lest I wander into the jaws of literal Death.” 

You continue walking, far past the table and chair set, to wander into the jaws of literal Death. John follows behind you. You keep talking despite your better judgment. “I’m convinced this is all taking place in my own head, and since I am constantly in the process of fucking with myself, I believe my own imagination has made it impossible for me to craft anything remotely entertaining.”

John giggles. “You’re hilarious when you’re not being a weird rule-stickler. It’s probably because you know I’m going to die! Hey, I’ve got an idea. Can you spare a dying man a favor? Can I ask you a question?”

You assume he’s going to ask you something about your ‘crush,’ to fuck with you. Too bad his alpha self already spoiled the fuckery. “Only if I can ask you one,” you say. “And you have to answer honestly.”

“Sounds fair! I get to go first.”

You stop walking. If you go too far, the Lord and Lady will show up and interrupt your game of twenty questions. You think you’re just barely on the edge of their border, that foggy area between your mind and actual death. Not that you can really tell based on scenery, the whole setting is still a gothic kid’s wet dream.

John leans over you, his hands behind his back, a look on his face that screams ‘trying to fuck with you.’ His cloak fully wraps around you, from the waist down. It comes as no surprise to you when he asks, "What's the _dirtiest_ thing you've fantasized about me!?"

"We fuck in a freshly tilled field," you answer, without hesitation. "Next question."

"Whoa, hold on, what the fuck?" he laughs, pressing his fingers to his temples and flashing a nervous smile. His face colors a bit. Seriously? Your joke was pretty tame. He manages to recover with another joke. "And here I thought you were going to say romantic sex in the missionary position."

"Not into it. That's an objectively bad kink."

"Why? Are you afraid you'll gaze deep into my glimmering sapphire orbs and fall in love?" he asks, his blush fading. He waggles his eyebrows. "I know I'm totally irresistible, but there is nothing to be afraid of! I've never been in love."

You mouth half of the word 'what,' utterly baffled as to what he's suggesting. You mull over questioning his implied inability to fall in love, and also calling out that you _can_ fall in love without requitement, but decide you'd rather save the precious time you have with a dead John and move on.

You have one hell of a question to ask. It’s something you’ve been mulling over since Karkat told you it at the memorial, and while you still don’t believe it, you’re starting to have some doubts. You decide ‘did you kill your mother’ would be too blunt, even in this situation. So you decide on…

"My turn," you say. "Who killed your mother?”

John frowns, drawing his head back. “I thought you’d ask something… I don’t know… fun? That’s a strange thing to ask.”

“Just answer the question.”

He rolls his eyes, shrugging. “You know there’s kind of a war going on about that. And everybody’s been gossiping about it for like a year. Did you miss that, somehow?”

“No, I didn’t miss it. Who killed her?”

John folds his mouth to the side, like he’s concerned you’re losing your mind. “It was on like _every newspaper,_ dude: Meenah Peixes.”

You nearly accept this answer. It’s the tone of his voice, how dismissive he is, how he’s perceiving that _you’re_ the batshit one here. But you power your way through the charm to conclude he didn’t actually answer it. “I’m asking _you,_ not the press.”

“Why are you even asking me?” he says, sounding suspicious. “Did you talk to Karkat? Can you tell my real self to-”

What the _fuck_. What is with these non-answers, trying to throw you off. “Sir, I just want a name. Just say a name.”

“This is some like, weird conspiracy theory level bull shit,” he says, folding his arms. “Do you think there is something nefarious going on or-”

“Answer the fucking question,” you snap. 

He blinks at you, slowly. He leans down to you, bends to a level where he’s hovering above your face. Your first thought is that he’s trying to intimidate you, but then he presses his gloved hand to the underside of your chin. Leather clad fingertips run along your neck, your jawline, he uses his knuckle to tilt your chin up to look at him. You melt. You are putty. He moves in, his lips parted, but pauses just an inch away. You feel his breath on you. You try to breach the distance, but are stopped by the grip he has on your chin.

“I thought I answered it,” he whispers, into your lips. “Didn’t I?”

It’s a stupid ruse. It’s a fucking distraction. It’s a dumb trick that plays on your feelings. He wants you to drop the topic and forget and never think about it again, and if he’s successful you’ll do _all those things,_ because when you look back on it it’ll be grossly overshadowed by ‘that time you kissed John.’

And you fall for it, hook, line, and sinker.

“… Eat a dick, sir,” you whisper back. A second passes, a second where you feel him smile, a second where every nerve of yours is on pins and needles, and you are rewarded. 

He kisses you so soft, forcing you to remain still, preventing you from deepening it or getting handsy. It’s brief, some soft presses, a politically correct amount of tongue that you reciprocate in full. You enjoy it not only from the visceral perspective that he’s pretty good and practiced at kissing, but from a meta standpoint as well. A first kiss remembered by only one party is poetically tragic. You are one self-aggrandizing maudlin narcissist.

He pulls away after placing both hands on either side of your jawline and pressing one final firm kiss to your lips. He straightens up, removes all physical contact between the two of you. He looks at you with no lust, no romance, and definitely no love. Just a teasing smile, like he pulled off a good trick. 

“Ah ha,” he says, victoriously. “So you _do_ have a crush on-!”

"WELL. THAT WAS BEAUTIFUL. TWO DUDES SHOWING THEIR MANLY, COMPLETELY HETEROSEXUAL LOVE. TO EACH OTHER. THE WAY TWO DUDES SHOULD. TOO BAD ONE OF THOSE DUDES. IS A SHITHIVE GARBAGE HUMAN!"

You hear the whirr of a very large object moving through the air very fast, and you leap away from John. He turns to face the oncoming Lord and Lady of Death, just as their great claw reaches down to wrap itself around him.

"Hey guys!" says John, unfazed. The sharp nail of the Lord pokes against his chest. "I'm the Patrician. Although I'm sure we've already met."

"MANY TIMES. MANY GODDAMN INSUFFERABLE. INTOLERABLE. HORRIBLE TIMES," says the Lord, his mandible swaying wildly up and down, with no real connection to how the dusty words emerge from him. "AND EACH TIME. EACH FUCKING TIME. I AM REMINDED OF HOW MUCH I DESPISE YOUR PERFECT TESTOSTERONE-SHAPED SHOULDERS. YOUR MASCULINE ‘DO. THE HAIR ON YOUR CHEST. IF AN OPPORTUNITY ARRIVES TO FUCK YOUR BEEFSTEAK LIFE OVER. I WILL TAKE IT."

"Oh my god," says John, now officially fazed.

The head on Death's skeletal shoulders clicks a couple times, the great machine inside grinding gears and pulling interior levers. A puff of dust steams out the bottom as the head rotates, then settles into place with a crunching noise. The green-cheeked Lady has taken the slot.

"I FOR ONE RATHER LIKE OUR CHATS!" says the Lady, in the same tomb-shutting voice as the Lord. She draws Death’s shared hand away from John a little. "ALTHOUGH I DO ADMIT YOU FALL INTO THE SAME PATTERN QUITE OFTEN WITH MY BROTHER. AND I WISH YOU WOULD DIE LESS."

John gives her his best people pleaser grin. Her bright green eyes flicker to where you're standing. "OH, I SEE YOU HAVE A HANDSOME CHAPERONE TODAY!"

"I do!" says John, gesturing at you. "But he won't be coming with you right now, it's just me, sorry about that!"

The head rotates again, machine creaking to life, the head landing on the Lord. "APOLOGY. NOT ACCEPTED. I CAN'T WAIT TO GET MY HANDS ALL OVER THAT BEASTLY SPECIMEN. THAT WALKING, TALKING DIATRIBE. DIRK STRIDER."

"Not today," you tell Death.

"BUT ONE DAY," says Death. "UNLIKE THIS UNSCRUPULOUS LOSER. I WISH YOU WOULD PERMANENTLY KICK THE BUCKET ALREADY. IT'S GETTING TO BE A PAIN HAVING TO HOLD ON TO ALL YOUR SOULS. IT'S FUCKING INSANE. YOU'RE NOT EVEN THIRTY YEARS OLD. I HAVE LIKE TWO FUCKING HUNDRED OF YOU. LIKE THE SHITTIEST ACTION FIGURE COLLECTION IMAGINABLE."

John shrugs. "I bet all two hundred of me are pulling killer pranks on you! Make that two hundred and one, now!"

The head flips to green. "UNFORTUNATELY NO KILLER PRANKS ARE BEING PULLED, DEAR, YOUR SOUL —SOULS I SHOULD SAY— ARE INERT AND DO NOTHING BUT PUSH MY BROTHER'S BUTTONS. AND SO THEY SHALL REMAIN, UNTIL YOUR FINAL DEATH."

Another flip. "AND WHAT A DAY THAT'S GOING TO BE. DANCING IN THE STREETS. CONSTANT PARTIES. MEN BEING DUDES. I CANNOT WAIT FOR IT. I CANNOT STAND OUR INCESSANT PUNCHOUTS. OUR FIGHTS. YOU SOMEHOW ALWAYS THINK YOU CAN WIN. DO YOU THINK YOU CAN BEAT A GOD. YOU IDIOT."

Apparently John has fistfights with the Lord of Death on the regular. That's… a kind of insanity you can respect. You watch the hand resume its position, claw held to his chest like a sword. John raises an eyebrow.

"Um, hey, can I ask a question before we do that? Can you bring back a soul from the dead?" he asks, raising his hand like the Lord is going to call on him. "All the troll gods can make deals and stuff for a high cost, so I figured you guys might too if the price is right. I've got lots of my own soul to sell to you? Parts of my body? Or my voice or my vision or something?"

You're not a great chef, but even you know that's a recipe for disaster. He's an idiot. You _will_ destroy this version of his soul yourself to prevent him from wrecking his alpha self's life. You open your mouth to say so, but the Lord's already yelling with his echoing tomb of a voice.

"WE CAN ONLY DO THE OPPOSITE. YOU WANT SOMEONE PERMA MURDERED BY DEATH GODS? DONE. BUT THE PRICE WOULD BE HIGHER THAN JUST YOUR SOULS FOR YOU. BECAUSE FUCK YOU. I HATE YOU."

The head rotates to the Lady. "I AM VERY SORRY, WE'RE ONLY GATEKEEPERS ON A ONE WAY THOROUGHFARE. THE FINAL DEATH IS A PERMANENT TRANSITION. YOU MIGHT NOT SEE YOUR FATHER EVER AGAIN."

John doesn't look disappointed, but he's not smiling. "Well, worth a shot, I guess."

A click and a whirr, and it's back to the Lord. Although he lacks musculature and subtlety, you swear he's giving John a smarmy grin. "FATHER? NO. MY SISTER'S AN IDIOT. YOU WANT YOUR MOTHER BACK. NEED THAT GUIDING HAND AGAIN."

You see John bristle, jerking up to a stick straight position. The Lord pokes him in the chest over and over for emphasis. "I SEE WHAT YOU'VE BEEN DOING DOWN THERE. YOU'RE PATHETIC IN COMPARISON TO HER. A REAL FAILURE. YOU HAVE NO AMBITION. NO VISION. SHE WOULD HAVE TAKEN ALTERNIA WHILE IT WAS DEFENSELESS. SHE WOULD HAVE KILLED THE SHITTIER PEIXES. SHE WOULD HAVE WEEDED OUT THE WEAK. SHE WOULD HAVE GIVEN ME MORE SOULS. INSTEAD OF JUST. FARTING AROUND. LIKE YOU."

"… _Wow,_ you’re an asshole," says John, swatting the Lord's thumbnail away. "But no, sorry, I would never, ever, _ever_ have let those things happen. I don't want her back. I don't need her, even though I'm not as clever or as smart or as good at leading as her. But I've got something she never really had."

"WHAT. A HEART?"

"Nah," he says, shrugging. "It’s just… she didn't ever make personal sacrifices, you know? She wouldn't have died for her friends, she didn't personally suffer for her city, she wouldn't have jumped in front of a speeding arrow to protect her kids, stuff like that."

"PERSONAL SACRIFICE IS A WEAKNESS."

"I think it's a strength!" he says, and he begins to float. He levitates upwards, until the Lord’s ribcage is straight and John is making eye contact with glowing red pupils. "I would die a million times over for my city, for my kingdom, for my friends. Whatever it took to make them happy. And I'm not perfect, but don't you think I've been doing a good job?"

He turns to look down at you. You're nodding your head 'yes' before you're consciously aware you're doing it. He beams at you, in a way you've never seen on him. A gentle, loving smile, with his eyes squinted and one side of his mouth just a little crooked.

"THEN DIE A MILLION TIMES MORE."

Hundreds of shadowy, dark tendrils appear from the void, on track to impale John. He barely gets his hands up in time to cast a gargantuan chain lightning spell, forming a wall of electric, pure white light that would blind you if you had human eyes. The tendrils burn up on contact, but a hundred more lash out, and a hundred after that, and a hundred after that. The second there is a breach in John's lightning, they ram through every available surface of his body, impaling his chest and eyes and legs with soft wet noises. Powerful as John is, he cannot defeat a god. He does not struggle or cry out as his soul dies.

It hurts, deeply, to watch this. You liked this John. You wanted him to stay.

His body evaporates into particles of white light, which soar up into the darkness until you can no longer see them. Death looms over you now, and you stare back.

"THE NEXT TIME WE MEET," he says, with a voice like an abandoned crypt. "MAY YOUR JUDGMENT BE HARSH AND YOUR DEATH PAINFUL."

He flicks you in the stomach with his thumb and pointer finger, and you fall, backwards, into life.

You inhale sharp, your vision shifting to the hallway in John’s foyer. You stumble forward, the change in setting not something you’re used to. After a couple calming breaths, you hear Vriska’s voice coming from the bathing room. It’s tinny, she must be on speakerphone.

“< _-and to my surprise, guess what???????? Guess fucking what???????? Just guess!_ >”

“< _Ummmmmmmm… he wasn’t a real John?_ >”

“< _You’re damn right he wasn’t real! And then I checked another one and he wasn’t real either!_ >”

Alright. How many beta Johns does he have out there. That is fucking ridiculous. Vriska keeps talking.

“< _And I have to admit, you did a crafty job of hiding it this time. Took me a while. But it wasn’t good enough! You’re doing that *thing* again, aren’t you! Where you’re being a coward! Let me in, dumbass! You’re getting out of bed if I’ve got anything to say about it!_ >”

“< _I’m not in bed…_ >”

“< _Liar! Let me in or I’m breaking down the door!_ >”

You hear John grumble something, then far away, you hear the main door to the foyer burst open and the sound of Vriska bellowing at the top of her lungs. You prep yourself for a strife and meet her in the adjacent high-ceilinged hall.

Vriska is surprised you’re here. She stops dead in her tracks when she sees you emerge from the hall that leads to the bathroom, wets her lips, and says carefully, “Strider, right? You’re the guy John says is similar to me.”

You frown. “That’s crazy. We’re nothing alike.”

“That’s exactly what I said!” she says, letting her guard down a bit. “So what are you doing with John?”

“I came here to get my katana,” you say, reserved. “Found him curled up in the dark. I made him take a bath. He smelled like fat, nasty trash.”

Vriska’s shoulders visibly relax. She doesn’t look like she wants to strife. “Great, good for you. How long has he been in the ablution block?”

A question you weren’t expecting. You don’t have Dave’s sense of time, you often let the hours get away from you without much notice, and you don’t know how long you were walking him to Death. You take a stab in the dark. “Thirty minutes, tops.”

Vriska makes a face like she just ate poisoned pancakes. “Wow, great job taking care of him, I’m totally floored! Who lets someone soak in their own grime for that long? He’s not going to come out on his own, you know.” You think that’s a pretty short bath, but you don’t get a chance to say so. She leans to the side to yell around you, to throw her voice down the hallway to the bathroom. “Because he’s being a FUCKING LOSER!!!!!!!!"

"I can hear you, Vriska!" hollers John, from the bathroom.

"GOOD!" she bellows back. She folds her arms and grins at you. "I’m revoking your John-cleaning privileges. But I give credit where credit’s due! Thanks for at the very least getting him out of his concupiscent platform. It’s tricky, well, tricky for anyone who isn’t me. I guess you're not totally useless after all."

You test the waters. You want to see what happens. "I'm useful to him in matters of concupiscent platforms. We rolled around in the sheets for a while."

“Great! If you’re gonna do that, then at least try to do something about those nightmares he has. They’re messed up beyond belief. All, like-” She proceeds to make this vague shoulder-shaking motion while grimacing. You have no idea what that is supposed to represent. “Sleepovers with him are the worst!”

You can’t tell if that answer was sarcastic, your implications of sexual acts too vague, or if she genuinely wants you to do that. You shoulda said ‘Hey Vriska, I sucked his fucking dick to get him out of bed. And then I snowballed him.’ Regrets. She storms past you, down the hallway, clapping rhythmically and yelling, "< _Alright, grubslut, it's been long enough! Up and at 'em! Time to face the day and kick its ass!_ >"

"< _Vriska, I don't wanna kick its ass…_ >" whines John, his voice muffled through the door.

She kicks it open, and you get a view of John with his head resting back against the rim of the bath, the rest of his body hidden from your view. He doesn’t look alarmed in the least. He sinks his head down further into the water when she comes in. You can’t see very well from where you are, but you imagine him blowing angry bubbles. Vriska turns around to face you before she goes into the bathing room. “You can go now,” she says, dismissively.

You ignore her, tilt your head to look over her shoulder. “Sir, are you going along with this? If I leave her alone with you she’s going to hurt you.”

They say it at the same time. “She won’t.” “I won’t.”

You stand dumbly in the doorway. John sits up in the bath, leans on his elbows against the surrounding floor. His mouth is barely a smile. “It’s okay Dirk,” he says, determined. “You can go.”

You don't want to go. You don't want to leave him.

"… And, um," says John, watching you. "That's… that's an order."

You raise your hands up, as though to surrender, and back out of the room. Vriska shuts the door on you.

For the first time in a long time, you don’t understand what you’re feeling. Something like disappointment, or heartbreak, or like you’ve crossed a line. You don’t hang around. You grab your stuff from his bedroom, leave the foyer, and you don’t stop walking until you get back to your room.

You take a bath and stare up at the ceiling and run your hands through your hair a thousand times as you try and fail not to imagine what the hell she’s doing to him. Harassing him? Hurting him until he feels something again? Sex in the bathtub? Fuck, that could have been you. That _should_ have been you.

You _cannot_ dwell on it, not now. Your shift starts in an hour and you have to steel yourself and let these thoughts hang so you can do your fucking job. You can’t begin the delve into self analysis, not now, because it might wreck you. On the other end of that deep dive there might be jealousy, might be sadness, might mean completely fucking yourself up because you were dumb enough to put your lips on his and now you’re gonna crave that. You slide further into the bath and focus your manic frustration on crafting a next step, on making a clear plan you can put into action once you’re done with your evening shift.

Making a plan calms you. When you finish your bath, you’ve got a task. You decide there’s only one person who needs to know all this, and whom you can confide in about John’s current state.

You need to talk to Jane.


	17. Sex and Consequences

You send an interdepartmental letter to Jane after your shift ends, around 1AM. You remember Rose's vision about your mail getting read, and you decide it's best to keep things on the DL. Just in case. You don't write what you want to: 'Dear Jane. John is manically depressed and destroying himself, beep beep red alert, please provide some fucking input,' because you have a feeling you shouldn't risk revealing that to anyone who could possibly use it against a powerful political entity. Even if they're just some nosy mailwoman. You instead write,

"Hey Jane,

I've mastered Alternian, or at least, all the words on the Common side, which I feel is some basic flavor of fluency. Let's meet up, talk about linguistics, and I'll crack open the cookbook you gave me for Candlenights. Hope you're ready for me to burn some pastries into a charred, coal-like heap.

-DS"

She writes back the next day with a date and time. Another five days. You get the old, old urge to bite your nails down to the bed with that kind of delay, so you spend your free time painting them with elaborate pictures instead of regressing to those anxious teenage habits. You draw really realistic penises with your seven shades of 'nude' and then paint over them in black. Secret dick manicure. Never fails.

While you busy your hands so you don't do something stupid to yourself, you can't busy your mind. You are consumed with worry for John. You feel yourself dipping into the pool of bonafide Dirk Strider insanity, feel that urge to care overtake the logical parts of your mind. You hope to every god in the planar sphere this does not mean you're falling in love with John, that you're just emoting this way because of worry. That you're deeply upset because you're not there to help him and _fix it._

You fantasize about what you would have done if given the same opportunity as Vriska. You would have supervised the rest of his cleanup, would have made him get dressed, would have made him something to eat, and, if he wanted it, would have gotten intimate with him. You're thinking he _wouldn't_ have wanted that, since you figure being in some kind of objectively awful depression slump would wreck hell on his libido, but you never really know with John. All that crush talk and the kiss has you baffled as to how he feels. 

If he has any feelings at all, with the state he's in.

You see John around, doing what's required of him, but it's not the alpha. You can tell because you know the signs now—- like his hair isn't styled the same as it was two hours ago, or one of his sideburns isn't even with the other, or at the end of the day he trembles like he's cold. You would barge back into his foyer with your key if it weren't for one thing: Vriska's still with him. You know this because she completely abandoned her Adviser duties and vanished from the palace. John covers for her with smooth excuses that are only half-truths. "She's helping me with a really important task! Your stratagems will have to wait," he tells some army general, grinning.

Two days later, she reappears like nothing happened. You also get an invitation to dinner slid under your door. Seeing his odd, goofy handwriting in lowercase blue is an unbelievable relief to you, but worry still plagues the back of your head. It's only been a few days. He must still be in a slump, but perhaps it's lessened.

You are proven completely incorrect when you follow through on the invitation. You’re prepping things in the kitchen with him when a beta John appears, looking fairly upbeat. The John cooking with you 'taps him out' to kill him. The alpha John shimmers, lightly, signifying he's the only one left. Cheery, excited, and making jokes about what you're cooking, from all indications he appears to be completely "back to normal." With heavy quotes. 

There is no fucking way Vriska “fixed” him in only two days. That is not enough time to grab someone by the collar and force them into full remission. He’s got to be bottling it away somewhere so deep it no longer affects his disposition. What did Vriska do to him? What would _you_ do to make him suppress all that stuff so thoroughly it wouldn't threaten to re-emerge for a while?

You think you would give him a challenge. A goal he _had_ to rise to or you would personally punish him. It probably wouldn't work, you'd probably fuck him up even more, but that's what you would try.

You wonder if that's what Vriska does. Maybe that's why he's entangled with her. Because she knows how to get him out of bed in the morning, because she gives him a challenge, because she gets him to feel something.

In that case, why did he trust you with the key and didn't let Vriska do her thing? What does he want you to do if Vriska's already his depressive hype-man? He took a gamble because he thought you might get him out of bed. And, because he's fucking l8cky, you came through. So what now?

Well. Now you cook pheasants, apparently.

You roast two small birds, and these fuckers are _aged._ They look and smell like they’ve been hanging by their necks for at least a week, wings and feathers and heads still on. You learn pretty quickly he's weirdly squeamish about cleaning them —"Just look at their creepy dead eyes, Dirk! They're totally planning something."— so you end up doing most of it while he instructs you. You make a show of forcefully beheading them with a butcher knife, angle it so the impact sends one shooting into John's chest. The tiny bird head spatters his apron with goop, then flops to the floor with a comic splat sound. John proceeds to scream in a ridiculously undignified manner, points at the ground, and kneejerk casts some OP lightning spell that cascades through the entire kitchen, heats the head into a pile of ash, and messes up your hair with all the static electricity. You have to drop the knife to clamp your hand over your mouth to hide the ungodly snort of laughter.

You are, at all times, dead-set ready to jump his bones at the slightest provocation, but there is _no provocation_. Besides for the usual, anyway—- bumping into you in the kitchen, hands brushing yours whenever he passes you something, always standing too close to you, etc. Just his normal touchy-feely self. He does spend a suspicious amount of time on his knees, directly in front of you, ass up, trying to dig for a roasting pan in the back of a bottom cupboard, but you're pretty sure it just seemed longer than usual because you were focusing on boner wrangling.

He sears the pheasants in butter, then you bard them with pancetta before popping them in the oven. You’ve got about forty five minutes until it’s done. You watch him make a sauce in the pan he used to sear the birds— deglazes and reduces the leftover meat bits with wine and more butter. You clean up the mess, then sit on the counter and drink the rest of the wine out of water glasses and watch him perform “neat card tricks.” This mostly consists of him systematically flicking cards at your forehead whenever he distracts you with something inane. You get hit every fucking time.

The rank smell leftover from cleaning the birds is slowly replaced with the lovely, savory, butter-fat smell from the roasting. You chop some carrots and parsnips when he takes the pheasant from the oven, your chopping less precise due to the wine on an empty stomach. He has _you_ saute the vegetables, looming over your shoulder to make sure you don’t fuck it up, throwing random shit at you whenever he wants you to add some seasoning. You manage to not fuck it up.

You have a really nice dinner with him. The tender aged meat is compounded with the fat from the pancetta, the pan sauce dribbled over the top of it all, the vegetables just there to highlight how great these birds are. You sink your teeth into juicy bites of delicious, almost sweet, meat. 

His leg rubs against yours under the table the whole time. You hold conversations through the entire dinner, but he doesn’t once bring up what happened in his room, and you don’t dare broach the topic. He doesn’t mention your so-called crush, he doesn’t ask about what happened in Death’s domain, he doesn’t talk about Vriska _at all_. About three fourths of the way through the meal, you get this heart-stopping thought that he might have rearranged his retcon selves in a way where you didn’t end up helping his alpha self, and it affects your mental state. You barely talk at all for the rest of dinner, letting him go on and on about this garbage pulp novel he read without quipping on how shit it is.

You help him wash dishes, and he walks you to the foyer. He hesitates before letting you leave, frowning at you.

“Hey, Dirk,” he says, gently. “Are you okay? You look upset.”

“I-” you swallow down the ‘I’m fine, sir.’ No. You can’t just sit on your ass anymore. Time to man up and fucking talk about your feelings. “I was wondering if you remember me going into your room the other day.”

He gasps, putting his hand over his heart. “You went into my room! How dare- ha ha, nah, I’m just fucking with you. Of course I remember you!” He folds his arms, giving you a warm smile. “You made me get out of my comfy bed, you ass. Do you not want me to remember that? I hope I didn’t embarrass you.” He pauses to wink. “Well, I hope I didn’t embarrass you _too much,_ anyway.”

“No, I do want you to remember it,” you say, your voice not as confident as you desire. Instead of saying, ‘I’m worried about you,’ you elect for the more neutral, feelingless, “… Are you alright?”

He blinks at you, confused. “Of course I’m alright. I’m always right as rain. It’s kind of my thing.”

“… Of course, sir,” you say, your voice a bit choked. “Thank you for the dinner.”

You leave the foyer as he calls out, “No, thank you!” The door shuts behind you, and you walk back to your room for an early bedtime.

*******

The next night, there’s a fancy ball you have to guard, and you are on top of this shit. You’ve got your eyes trained on Vriska, partly due to the fact you want to talk to her after, and partly to stop her from dragging off John somewhere and possibly slaughtering him, like she did in the fall. You watch her every time she goes to talk to John, and make sure she knows you’re looking. Nothing ends up happening. You think it’s due to your intimidation antics. John gives you a thumbs up, after the dance. You guess he expected you to chaperone her. Odd thing to expect.

You catch her in an empty hallway afterwords, when she’s well and alone and seemingly tipsy on random party cocktails. She is holding a mug of something she swiped from the ball, and is wearing the kind of dress you’d see on a teenager at a secondary school dance. But not like, the end of year formal, like, a weird mid-season fall dance. She finger guns at you and clicks her tongue against the roof of her mouth.

"Adviser Serket," you address, properly. "Might I bother you for a personal question."

"< _At least ask it in Alternian, pleb,_ >" she says, waving her drink around. You fold your mouth to the side, pretend to be confused. After a couple seconds, she rolls her eyes, says, "< _Ohhhhhhhh, riiiiiiiight, you can't speak it! Duuuuuuuuh. I tooooooootally forgot you're completely and inexplicably inept at this one thing, somehow, woooooooow._ > Alright, hit me."

You look around one more time to make sure the hallway is clear, then ask, "How the fuck did you get John back to 'normal' in such a short amount of time?"

"Are you serious?" she says, on the verge of laughter. "It's true loathing, idiot! All I have to do is lay out my plans for him and he _has_ to get up or risk losing to me. It's a noble sacrifice on my part, since now he knows what I'm up to, but it's worth it. Life just isn't as fun without him at the top of his game."

You seriously don't understand what is up with the loathing thing, but your theory is confirmed. She does the same thing that you would do. "So you give him a challenge," you say, slowly. "Maybe we are similar."

She goes on the defensive, at that. Her eyes narrow, and she says, suspicious, "Hey, what quadrant of his are you trying to be in, anyway?"

You have no idea what the hell she's asking. "… What?"

"He's obviously trying to get you to pity him, which is great if that works out, since then I don't have to friggin' bust my ass all the time whenever he's in a mood. But you're a pretty big enigma. So, do you pity him? Or am I going to have to take you out?"

You still have no idea what the fuck she's asking you, but you really, really don't want to start a publicly declared fight with Vriska. It might be incredibly fun if you were in a higher position, but as an effectively low-level guard with zero resources? No. You wouldn't stand a chance. She'd perma-murder you within a week.

So, baffling as her question is, you're forced to answer in the affirmative. You guess, at some level, you _barely_ pity John. His life has been some fucked up psyche destroying politico fest up to this point, and he's had to make many tough choices you wouldn't wish on anybody but your worst enemies. So it's not entirely a lie when you say, "Yeah, I guess I pity him." But it's not really the truth, either.

Vriska lowers her defenses once more. She rolls her eyes. "Well, you'd better confess to him. Quadrant's free for the taking, so I'd appreciate it if you filled that one. It'd make my life much easier."

She leaves, leaving you baffled on what, exactly, you're supposed to "fill." Is there some kind of pie chart to color in. Perhaps you'll ask John, the next time you're alone with him.

*******

You make some pinwheel pastries with Jane in one of the communal guard kitchens. You fold the dough in fours, a dollop of her homemade jam goes in the middle, and you squirt thin white frosting on them in suggestive patterns. You make a shit fuck crap ton of them and leave most of them on the counter for your coworkers. You leave a note that says “I promise these aren’t poisoned. - DS” for yucks. Jane gets a chuckle out of that.

You sit and eat too many pastries in your locked down, secure room, and you tell her _everything._ Everything but the kiss and the items relating to the possible murder of his mother. You poke in that direction and she doesn’t seem to know about it, so you decide to keep it quiet. One thing at a time, and the number one priority happens to be what she tasked you with at the beginning of all this intrigue: what’s happened to her cousin.

"Oh my gods," says Jane, putting a hand to her mouth once you’re done with the whole tale. “John’s lost it.”

“I think he’s long since lost it, if Vriska’s implications are anything to go by.”

She chews a piece of her third pastry over a small plate, careful not to get the crumbs on your bed. “You don’t understand, John doesn’t _get_ stressed, or depressed, for that matter. Troubles flow past him like water off a duck’s back. This is all new.”

You chew on your own pinwheel. “Really. Are you sure you just didn’t notice? I wouldn’t have noticed if he didn’t _want_ me to notice.”

“Yes, Dirk, he was meticulously hiding his emotional fragility for decades to everyone with the exception of that horrendous Miss Serket. And now you,” she scoffs, pointing accusingly at you. “Of course not! That’d be insane. And John might have a few screws loose but he is not some sort of… feelings masking perfectionist. If he was wearing a mask, it hasn’t ever cracked.”

“From what I can tell, I think he’s really good at _suppressing,_ not hiding,” you say. You might not have known John as long as she has, but you think she’s wrong. “He said he starved himself when he was a teenager. Did you notice that?”

She frowns, sets her empty plate down. “I was away from the palace at that time.”

“Yeah, but, history of mental health issues? Stack that on the ‘the Patrician’s been fucked for a while’ evidence pile. Point: Dirk.” You set your own plate on your desk, then lean forward on your chair. “Humor me here. Let’s say he’s got some flavor of depression, maybe a whole delicious sundae of depression, mania, anxiety, whatever. You can agree with me that, at this moment in time, he’s got problems and he’s trying to suppress the shit out of them.”

She nods. 

“And what helps with suppression? Distraction. Having enough shit constantly going on around you that you can’t participate in the battlefield in your head, a constant need to keep moving so you don’t have to stop and think.”

Jane raises an eyebrow at you. “Going off of personal experience there, Strider?” 

Maybe. Whatever, can’t think about it now. You ignore her and keep talking.

“So who’s best at creating problems he needs to fix, and taking his mind off of things through unscrupulous methods? No one better than Vriska Serket, who has a whole host of shiny temptations to dangle in front of his face.”

Jane nods along with you, agreeing with your theory. “I see. I’m still fairly keen on getting Vriska ousted from his life. While you’ve now convinced me that removing Vriska from the equation will not fix the core of John’s current issue, it will allow him to find other ‘distractions.’ Ones that, hopefully, do not require him to make monthly trips to Jake, and bi-weekly trips to me.”

“I don’t know about that,” you say, twisting towards the desk to take another bite of your pastry. “I’m not sure if removing Vriska will make him even the most minute bit ‘healthier.’ So here’s a hard question for you: what happens if this situation gets worse? What happens if the Patrician becomes unfit to rule?”

You’re asking not because you don’t know— Jane will take over, and John will either die or resign. And you’re not asking because you think it will happen— you think John can recover at an inhuman rate in order to do his job. You’re asking because you want to see how Jane will react. You’re asking because you don’t know how she feels about being the Heir.

“It won’t get worse,” she says.

“But what if?”

“Then I take over.”

Her brow folds in, she stares down at the crumbs on the plate, refusing to look at you. “And you don’t want to,” you state. “Why not? You seem like the type to want to be in charge.”

She’s silent for a long time. You don’t change the topic, or even turn away to finish off your pastry. You wait. You’re patient.

"When I was six," she says, quietly. "My mother was murdered. If I were older at the time, I would have been crowned there and then, but the title of Patrician went to my mother's sister. And her son John was named the Heir."

You know this story, although not through Jane. Everybody and their dog knew that Patrician Crocker murdered her sister to take the throne, but nobody could prove it. You let Jane continue.

"I thought I wanted to be the Patrician one day. I wanted it terribly. I dreamt of it. I had all these sweeping, impossible changes planned, although they were childish fantasies in retrospect. And I was so angry. John… didn't seem to want it, not even a little. I told him," she pauses to chuckle. "I told him he should abdicate as soon as he was old enough. He was ten at the time, I believe."

You stay silent.

"And I won't ever forget what he told me. He said," she does a fairly good impression of his voice here, "'I can't do that to you! I'm going to do _everything_ to protect you!' I didn't understand his sentiment for quite some time.

"I… I could do the backstabbing, the appearances, and a little makeup and some false eyelashes would make me as handsome as my cousin. The public appearances might be a bit challenging, my specialty lies in healing, so I would need to be more of a shut-in than Übermensch John. But the cloning. The way to survive the constant attempts on his life, how to multitask the planet shattering events that constantly happen. I… I can't."

You watch her cover her face, slide her hands under her glasses. She sounds like she's on the edge of tears.

"I'm such a coward, Dirk! If I had to do what he does, I'd go mad! Every time I split myself, I don't know if I wake up as the girl about to die or the girl about to look into her own eyes and force herself to walk to the slaughter. Which fate is worse? If I dwell on it for too long I… Oh, dearest John, I don't know how he does it."

You know how he does it: dissociation. Perceiving himself as an 'other.' Willfully forgetting the ethics of cloning so they can't take over his mind.

And you venture there's even some subconscious self-hatred going on. Gets off on killing himself. That would make sense, but, TBD, you guess.

"Hey," you say, gently. You reach out for her, touch the sides of her face. "Hey, don't beat yourself up about it. Thinking all that stuff means you're sane."

She's not crying, thank goddess. She relaxes, removes her hands from her face, and presses a palm to your knuckles. "And the implication is that John doesn't have his marbles all in order."

You don't say anything. She sighs. "And I feel terrible telling you this, Dirk, but his marbles cannot possibly be meticulously organized if he is to rule effectively. Just… I just hope he doesn’t collapse. Or worse, I hope he doesn’t harden. I hope he doesn't become his mother."

You are about to say 'I liked his mother,' before remembering the whole 'murdered Jane's mother' conspiracy theory. Probably best not to bring that up.

You continue to talk about what to do with him, and Vriska. Jane still wants to oust her, you want to wait and see. You’re afraid she’s keeping him stable, and even though you’d _love_ to take over that role, there is no goddamn way you wouldn’t trip over your own ego and fuck him up. If he were on his own, maybe, but he’s running a fucking kingdom. You can’t risk that.

In the end, you decide to sit on your hands and do nothing. Paralyzed by indecision, there was really no other outcome for you. There never is. 

At least you feel better about it after talking it over. That’s new.

*******

You’re eager to try out this… feelings… talking thing. You want to rehash it all with Roxy. You haven’t chatted with her for a while —either she’s AWOL or you’ve been busy— so you decide to go see her the day after. It’s a weekend, and all her roommates are out and about, but she happens to be in. You walk into her four-bed dorm and hear her running the tap in the recess in the back of the room. You make your way there.

The corner just has a sink and a mirror in it, standard dorm fair. Roxy is cleaning off her smeared lipstick. She swings the tap closed and turns to you with a big grin and an even bigger “Hello!” She looks disheveled. Her hair is sticking up in odd places, her blindfold is askew, her uniform is untidy and wrinkled, like it was tossed haphazardly off a…

Oh fuck.

“Hey guess what you need to bake me, Dirk?” Roxy grins all sloppy at you. “A ‘congrats on the sex’ cake! Hop to it, ‘cuz this bitch just got boooooonneed!”

Your heart nearly stops. "Roxy," you say, trying to keep your voice level. "Did you sleep with the Patrician?"

“Ch'yeah! How’d you know?” She looks delighted that you guessed it right. She proceeds to sniff the unbuttoned collar of her uniform. “Do I smell like him or something?"

Your heart actually stops. That bizzaro-world child breeding scenario actually happened. And so soon, after his father died. Roxy's grin snaps into something more horrified when she sees the expression you're unwillingly contorting your face into. "Oh. Oh no, Dirk, _Dirk,_ do you… do you have a crush on him?" She reaches out for your cheek, dripping with concern, you let her touch. Her hand is warm. "I didn't know, Dirk, sweetie, I didn't know. I'm sorry, I'm so sorry."

She pauses, her head tilted towards the floor. She draws back her hand, then says quietly, like she's going to break a bunch of dishware if she talks too loud, "If it makes you feel better, it was probably a one and done kinda deal? Just business, babe. Well, business and a _little_ fun, obvs. You're free to make a move, make a billion moves, I defs don't have him on lockdown. And oh my gods, I am really sorry. Can I just say that at you forever?"

You have to start thinking rationally. Your heart starts beating again. You still can’t bring yourself to say anything, and Roxy keeps babbling.

"I… uh… Dirk… Don't tell anyone, okay? You promise? It's real secret right now, but I seariously don't wanna break your heart." She looks around to double check no one else is in the room, then leans in to whisper to you. "Here's the skinny. John needs a heir real real bad, and I wanna be a mom just as bad, and we're friends… so… we just decided to take advantage of a win-win situation? We're gonna be parents. But we ain't in a romance."

She leans away, nearly tearful and biting her lip. You take a slow breath, to calm yourself. It still bothers you that he and Roxy got intimate, but you know she’s telling the truth. Just a process to create an heir so the machine of the royal family can keep working. You knew this was going to happen. You can handle it. "I…" you say, your voice catching. You take another breath. "… That kid's gonna be really loved, huh?"

Roxy smiles all big again. "You bet! Probably'll have at least two moms, and every parent they've got is gonna spoil them rotten! And I'm gonna spoil them the rottenest, I'm gonna be the capstone of the awesome mom pyramid!"

You're in a rare state of emotional distress, so you can't help but ask a tactless question. "And you're really not going to have a relationship with him? No surprise shotgun weddings for 'the sake of the childrens?'"

"Nah," she says, shrugging. "He's cool and has a choice ass but I don't wanna be his gf, you know? He's just a good friend. It'd feel all hells of weird getting up and cozy with him if it were for pleasure instead of reproductive shenanigans. Besides, ain't nothin' wrong with a family that's got more than two parents involved."

"You have to find yourself a nice lady for that equation to work out."

She laughs. "So does John. Or maybe… he could find himself a nice man?" She waggles her eyebrows above her blindfold, at rapid rates. “He claims he’s only into ladies but I’m like, p sure he was just freaked about the heir thing. So now that that’s taken care of…”

“Yeah, I am _not_ talking about this with you right after you had sex with him,” you say, feeling beleaguered. “Good luck, hope you’re… fertile. Time to go now.”

Roxy gives you a weak, and plagued with guilt, “Goodbye Dirk,” as you head back to your room. She doesn’t follow you. You hope she doesn’t think you’re mad at her, but you can’t bring yourself to tell her that at the moment. You’re 25% heartbroken, 25% appalled, and 50% baffled by the fact that actually happened. Now that you know what goes on with John’s mental state, you regret not saying anything. 

There’s no way this is a good decision. He’s going to fuck Roxy’s kid up. You don’t care how detached she keeps the child from him, that kid’s going to have to be raised to take the throne one day and will therefore have to interact with John on the regular. He’s going to be this weird, emotionally distant father who probably loves his kid but can’t fucking express that well enough to give them any sort of stability. 

You think his mother did a similar one-night-stand thing with John’s father and Jade’s father, respectively, but Patrician Crocker had to have been in a better mental state than John is now. And she had to have known her partners for more than a single fucking year. And there wasn’t an elaborate crisis going on.

Actually, come to think of it… you don’t know if any of those things are true. John seemed to have a pretty fucked up childhood. What if John is just doing what he knows. Repeating mistakes. What if he’s going to fuck up that kid the way his mother fucked _him_ up. And what if that fucked up kid is going to grow up resentful and cold and make plans to kill him like how John maybe offed his mother which is a thing you _cannot let yourself forget_ and holy shit this is a tangled web woven.

You know that you can’t dwell on it, because there’s nothing you can do about it. Not without emotionally hurting either of them, and you can’t bring yourself to do that. There’s nothing you can do about it. You have to force it back.

You have to. You _have_ to.


	18. Weatherman

You avoid talking to Roxy about anything related to John. You will do this forever, if you’re able. You still talk to her, and you still see the guilt on her face when she thinks you aren’t looking, but your avoidant ass can’t manage to bring it up. Oddly, you’re not bothered hanging around John the same way you are hanging around Roxy. You figure your blasé attitude towards him is due to him appearing to be completely unaffected by the situation. As per usual. 

At least you’ve got enough shit going on around you to distract you. And it’s something new this time: weather problems. Winter has exposed itself in full force, and it’s wrecking the city.

Blizzards aren’t unheard of in the area, the country is in the north and near the mountains, but usually the ocean keeps most of the harsher snow-related weather symptoms away. But these blizzards are nonstop. These blizzards are like the gods of nature decided to gang up on Porkmor-kahn and attempt to bury it to the point of inaction. Bukkake the whole town in a mess of snow. They go for days at a time, with only brief breaks of a few hours, and the palace is driving itself stir-crazy. Roxy stops sneaking out and sits in her room and pouts. Jane begins stress-baking chocolate chip cookies. Her Ardent Auctoritas snaps one day and goes on a tirade in front of three maids about how she can’t swim in the river in weather like this. But more concerning than the habits of the palace citizens is the state of the city.

Goods can barely make it through from the regular trade routes. Even if they could, people can’t make it to the stores to buy supplies they need. And from a militaristic standpoint, the city is hard to defend like this (but perhaps, harder to attack). 

John has the Witches college look into if the blizzards are powerful weather magic, but there’s no dice. The Auctor has her priests look into if the collective city made a troll god mad, but that doesn’t fly either. A natural weather pattern, albeit one with a lot of kick. 

So it’s another problem on John’s list. You’re guarding the council for one of the bigger planning meetings. Vriska covers a huge chunk of the logistics for what to do about it, while John keeps her focused on the welfare of the people instead of… whatever weird grandstand thing she has in mind. The elected officials and politicians who are in on the meetings offer up staff and resources and micromanaging. The plan follows as such:

-Weather witches and mages will diminish the storm.  
-John will finish it off with a burst of his beefed up weather powers.  
-The storm will be decimated for an estimated 48-72 hours, allowing emergency crews to kick into gear and replenish the city.

He catches you in private, after the plan is laid. You’re not quite sure how he does that, you’re turning a corner down your usual service hallway to your room and suddenly he’s _right there_. He leans on the wall and blocks your path.

“So, hey, would you do me a favor?” he asks you.

“A required favor, sir?”

“A required favor, sir,” he confirms. “I want you to be there with me when I clear out the storm tonight. It’ll be on the roof. You remember where that is, right?”

“Of course,” you say. “But why do you need me?”

“Because I…” he hesitates, swings his head around for eavesdroppers. He casts a silence spell with a flick of his hands. A shimmery bubble descends over the top of the two of you. “Because I probably won’t be in a good state. I mean, of course it depends on our talented weather mages and all, but I have a feeling this is going to take quite a bit out of me! And I trust you not to take advantage of that.”

You feel yourself frown. “You trust me? Why?”

“Because it’s been a while and you didn’t tell anyone about… about what you saw in my room,” he says, quietly. “You didn’t tell anyone, did you?”

“No,” you lie, without hesitation.

“See? Perfectly trustworthy!” he says, then claps you on the shoulder. The spell shimmers and disperses around the both of you. “Anyway, see you later, gator!”

You ironically salute goodbye to him and hope to Death that Jane doesn’t tattle on you.

You meet him on the roof after you eat your (bland, protein-packed) dinner in the mess hall, using your key to enter his foyer. You climb up the ladder to the trapdoor, hoist yourself onto the brick ledge where you once listened to him expose his heart to you while he was plastered. Seems like ages ago.

He’s standing in the center of the roof with his back to you, in plain black breeches and dark blue shirt with the sleeves rolled up to the elbows. It’s pretty fucking cold out, like your guard uniform is barely enough to keep you from getting frostbitten in fifteen or so minutes, so you’re pretty damn concerned for him for like ten seconds before you remember the whole weather control thing. He’s probably got a temperate spell going.

It’s not storming anymore. It's snowing gently, the flakes small and floaty in the dark, but the clouds above you are just as massive and looming as they were in the blizzard. John nods at you when you stand at his side, then frowns at the clouds.

"It still looks pretty big," he says, tapping his foot like he's impatient. "Did the college even do anything? Let me check."

He raises both his forefingers up to the sky, then spreads them out, like he's pointing at each end of the cloud mass. As he does so, the entire fucking sky pulses with a soft blue glow. The light spans the whole horizon, as far as you can see in any direction. You knew he had weather control, but the scale of what he can do never really hit you before. That's not just pushing human abilities to their limits, this power is godlike.

He lowers his arms, and the glow ceases. He folds his mouth to the side. "Well, it looks like they dissipated the ocean side storm, which was the hard part, but I would have preferred it if they just decreased the scale of the whole thing. Oh well."

"Are you still going to be alright?" you ask.

"Of course," he says, chipper. "Right as rain! Just make sure to catch me if I faint or something dumb."

Before you can respond in the affirmative, he makes a gesture like he wants you to step back. You do so, moving away a couple feet, leaning against the wall of the brick tower next to you. He spreads his arms as wide as they can go, then claps his hands together hard. The impact of his hands make no sound at all. Instead, from the clouds comes a loud roll of thunder, like the sky is arguing with him.

You're close enough to feel a chill roll off him, colder than the air around you. He exhales, his foggy breath so visible it looks like he's in absolute zero temperatures. His blue eyes flicker with a neon light that seems to be lurking behind his irises. He licks the edges of his front teeth. He raises his hands, fingers spread, to gesture at opposite edges of the horizon.

The sky flashes, like little explosions of lightning are being set off far above the cloud layer. A circle of focusing spirals out from around his feet, the circumference lit by blue magic that laps at the air like fire. He holds his pose.

His hands and arms start to shake like he's lifting something too heavy for him. Blood begins to trickle, then stream, from his left nostril, pattering down his chin and seeping into his blue shirt. His mouth twists into a triumphant smile, like he's having a vicious sort of fun. Slowly, and without blinking, he raises one arm up towards the sky.

This takes quite some time, like there's a force trying to push his shoulders into the ground and he's doing all he can to not give in to gravity. You can see the pain on him, in how his muscles flex, in how he twitches, in the blood pouring down his chin. But that smile stops you from worrying. He's so utterly confident that you cannot bring yourself to doubt him.

As soon as he gets his arm up, nine or so bolts of lightning roil down and strike him. You watch them skitter along his arm in spiderweb patterns lit neon white, peel across his face and neck and slip under his shirt, draw nerve maps along every inch of him all the way down to his feet. They rebound inside his skin, crackling and shifting like tree branches in a hurricane. You can see every line of his body lit through his clothes.

The patterns occasionally move such a way that they highlight a pretty clear erection, which is _weird,_ but hey, you're not complaining. Maybe it's an athletic exertion thing. Or he just gets off on nosebleeds and getting struck by lightning. But who doesn't, really. Adrenaline junkie. You get it.

John laughs, the kind of laugh emitted when escaping a desperate situation. Manically grinning, with shaking fingers, he begins to draw a grid in the air. The clouds reflect his gestures, giant lines of dark blue lightning cutting through the blizzard and forming jagged squares. You watch the whole dome of the sky, extending far into the horizon, get divided into a fairly even grid. You start to get worried about that nosebleed.

He laughs again, when he's done, like he just heard the punchline to a joke you don't know. He flings his arms down. The lighting inside him crackles out his fingertips and collides into the sky, filling in the dark grid of magic with a brighter color. Nothing else happens, the cloud squares hang there, sizzling with light. The focus circle around him vanishes. He shakes his arms out, then stands up straight. Turns to you. 

He looks at you heavy lidded, teeth tugging at his bloody bottom lip, lust oozing out of every pore.

"Hey, Dirk," he sighs, and his voice sounds like he just inhaled an entire campfire. "Let's make love. I can fly you up to the clouds and we can do it there."

"What the fuck? No?" you say, not conflicted about this in the least. "Dude, you're loopy from blood loss. You need a healer."

"The only healer I need is your diiiiiiii-" His sentence is cut short by his eyes rolling back in his head and him promptly fainting. You're there to catch him.

You lower him down to the ground, sit crosslegged, adjust him so his head is cradled in the crook of your arm and the rest of him is splayed across your lap. His skin is pale, cold as ice, his mouth open a little like he's dying. At least his nose stopped bleeding. You roll down his sleeves for him, take off your scarf and sash and black jacket to use it to cover him. You’re too pumped full of adrenaline to notice the cold.

You use your scarf to mop up the blood, trying to think through what the hell you can do next. You can't just leave him up here to get a healer, but he's way too big for you to carry down the ladder without hurting him. You briefly consider taking him out and then throwing his corpse down the trapdoor and dragging him to Jake again, but your heart fucking _throbs_ at that thought, like your stomach churns and everything, and- god, fuck, shit, you care about him too much, don't you? Dammit. Fuck. There's no way you can bring yourself to do a mercy kill. You are well past the point of no return vis a vis John Egbert.

You are drawn out of your thoughts by John giggling, lightly, at your efforts to wipe the blood from his chin. His eyes are open, half-lidded, but lively. "Aww, Dirk," he says, and his voice is still ragged. "You're such a sweetheart. I knew I could trust you."

"Holy hell, don't talk right now, you need a healer," you say, as he tries to pathetically chuckle when you half-smother his mouth with your scarf. "I'll grab Jane. She won't-"

He swats your hand away, then holds onto your wrist with a surprisingly tight grip. He sounds so heartbroken when he begs, "No, Dirk. Stay with me, please. I just need _you._ "

You ache down to your soul. You can't say no to him.

You're reminded of Vriska telling you 'he wants you to pity him' which makes no fucking sense but, alright, you can see it. Not like you actually pity him, you feel kind of bad for him but you mostly respect and admire him for shouldering through it all. Doesn't make him look any less pathetic right now. You wonder why he's trying to manipulate you into feeling that way.

Maybe 'cuz it makes you a pushover.

He coughs, to try and clear his throat. You start mopping up the stuff that dripped down to his chest. He says, meekly, “Hey, is my spell working?”

You’ve neglected to pay attention to your surroundings. You look up at the sky. You start to see the clouds peel away as though someone were ripping off pieces of birch bark and throwing them to the ground. Big, jagged squares of cloud detach themselves from the mass and float down into the earth, where they vanish into puffs. When a large one falls over the human side of the city and dissipates into the river, you think you hear the faint sound of cheering.

"Yeah," you say, watching the one above you fall, loom closer and closer to you. And you can't hide the pride in your voice when you say, "It's working just fine."

He smiles, just as the large chunk of cloud descends over the both of you. The moisture in it chills you, but it passes quickly, exposing a clear, perfect night sky, the stars out and glowing at you.

You wait with him until he can stand up without passing out, shushing him whenever he tries to start a conversation with you. He looks smug as hell whenever you do that, like you’re praising him every time you show some iota of concern. This asshole.

You eventually help him down the ladder as best you can, letting him climb down first while you lean over the trapdoor and hold onto the back of his shirt as long as possible in case he loses consciousness mid-descent. He makes it down without issue, waits against the wall as you make your way down. You throw your jacket over his shoulders to keep him warm. You have him hook his arm over you so you can take some of his weight, and he directs you to the nearest sitting room. 

It’s nothing special, well, nothing special compared to the rest of his quarters. It’s still decked out in bourgeoisie decor worth more than your whole livelihood. But it’s just two couches facing each other and a coffee table between them. You have him lie down on the couch as he giggles about something incomprehensible, and you go to the kitchen to get something for him. You’d cook for him if you weren’t freaked as fuck about leaving him alone— instead you grab some oranges and a glass of water.

He’s sitting up when you return, long legs kicked up over the coffee table, your jacket folded neatly and resting on the arm of the couch. He’s got some color back in his face. You berate him for moving, to which he waggles his eyebrows at you and makes a groan worthy pun about blood loss. You move to sit on the couch across from him, but he pats the space next to him insistently. And… and you’re fucking weak. You sit next to him.

He scoots close to you, thigh pressing against yours, and eagerly peels the oranges. You watch him eat, listen to him talk about the logistics of what he just did, how _excited_ he was that the blizzard was of such-and-such type so he could do so-and-so method. And while this magic discussion would usually interest you, you’re unable to respond well. You’re starting to feel light headed, getting a buzz in your chest, that horrible longing for him. ‘Let’s make love’ echos in your head, and you wonder if he meant it. The idea is a lot more heart throbbing now that he isn’t in danger of fainting.

He finishes off the oranges and the glass of water, looking ‘right as rain’ again. You don’t get a chance to examine his physical state. As soon as there’s a lull in his rant about “snow stuff,” he sags down and rests his head on your shoulder.

You fur up like a cat. He doesn’t say a word. You hear every pulse of your heart echo in your ear. He shifts to place his hand on your thigh. You spread your legs a bit.

You may be self-deprecating, but you aren’t dumb. You know when someone wants you. There is, at this point, an eighty five percent chance he wants to fuck you. The fifteen percent chance he _isn't_ trying to bed you is too baffling to think of a reason for. He's _rubbing his thumb along your upper thigh,_ squarely in the forbidden zone of intimacy where things start getting jumpy if you move a couple inches inward. That is not a place you touch if you don't want to get laid.

You’re pretty sure he wants to bone you for stress relief purposes, or maybe because he finds you quote-unquote ‘interesting.’ But hell, you’ll take it. You’re not going to stare a gift horse in the mouth. You are, however, going to do some dental examination on it if said horse just bled out for a while.

“Should we… should _you_ really be doing this after you just had the nosebleed of the century?”

“Doing what?” he asks, totally ignorant of what you’re talking about.

You don’t have the nards to answer that, in case you’re wrong. “Nevermind.”

"Mmm," he hums, breathy. "Hey, Dirk. Can I see your eyes?"

You reach for your blindfold. Before you can unhook the strings around your ears, you’re hit by a dump truck of realization. You pull back, away from him. He sits up fully and blinks at you, innocently.

“John, can you explain to me why the _fuck_ you didn’t have one of your beta selves do the weather lightshow?” you say, your voice coming out way shakier than you want it to be. “I’m sure you have a boatload of reasons why you chose this path, but would one of those _happen_ to involve the fact you will apparently exploit my batshit insane tendency to care about my friends in order to see my eyes?”

“What, noooooooo, that would be a really lame reason to over work myself,” he says, grinning too wide for it to possibly be the truth.

You give up. You know what, he earned it. That’s a hell of an effort to put in to see your peepers. You’re nearly flattered.

You sigh. You remove your blindfold, then set it on the arm of the couch.

John parts his lips, curious. He takes his glasses off, sets them aside, and leans in closer to look at you. “I’m near sighted,” he mutters, as an excuse. He reaches out, touches the side of your face, presses a warm palm to your cheek. You wait patiently for him to tell you to put your blindfold back on again.

Your eyes consist of large panels of orange stroma with voids drilled into the middle. The voids do not go into your physical head. You’ve hypothesized the voids lead to the place where you go when you soulwalk. You have no type of feeling in your eyes. If you so choose, you can stick your fingers straight in the holes and waggle them around like they’re burrowing worms. The muscles that surround your “pupil” feel soft, like the edges of a cooked artichoke. Because you lack moisture, the void drips from the holes and spreads across the span of your eye in order to give you enough friction to blink. You don’t tend to blink if you have your blindfold on— thus the void leakage.

You also cannot move your “pupils.” You appear as though you are staring dead ahead, always, at all times. Comes in handy when you don’t want to make intimate eye contact. Like right now.

John frowns, concerned. "You look, uh, kind of sad? Are you alright?"

"No, I'm not sad, John. Trust me, that's the least applicable emotion to any situation I've experienced in the past… ever."

John chuckles, then with his thumb, wipes some of your ever-present ooze away from your lower lid. "But you're crying!"

“It’s not tears, it’s-” your sentence slams into a brick wall when you watch John lick his finger clean of your void. "Holy shit. Why in the ever living fuck would you eat that."

He shrugs. “You don’t taste like anything.”

“Is that. Is that a good thing.”

“I don’t know yet. More evidence is needed.”

His hand slides down to your jawline, fingertips pressed along the curve of your face. He leans in, and kisses the outside corner of your eye. Your heart, despite your best attempts to control such inanity, flutters.

You shut the eye he’s paying lip service to, as he breathes along your lashes. He presses his lips very gently to your bottom lid, hesitates, repeats the same kiss. Then he kisses the bridge of your nose, the corner of your other eye, then the upper lid. He tilts your head to get the angles he wants. He spends time on you, lingers, gives you the shivers. You cross and uncross your legs as he moves across your eyes. Dig your fingers into the couch so you don’t dig them into him. He backs off a little, you feel his breath on your ear.

"I- I’ve never kissed a guy like this before, I- Dirk- I-"

You want to say, 'John, this is the gayest fucking thing on the planet, get over it,' but then he might stop. You don't want him to stop. You can teach him a personal lesson later, when you don't want to be kissed quite as bad.

So instead you say, "Don't think about it right now." Because he's good at that.

He takes your advice. He ducks in for your ear, kisses the tip of it. You can’t bring yourself to open your eyes. He pushes your chin away, you’ve got that anticipation-static on every inch of your exposed skin. He takes your hoop earring between his lips and tugs, you feel tongue and cold metal on your earlobe and you shiver with the electricity coursing through you. You stop trying to cross your legs, there is no hope of hiding how much you enjoy his kisses at this stage of the game. He keeps one hand on your jaw, but places the other one over your knuckles, which are currently tightly gripping the couch. You force yourself to relax, to lace fingers with him. You nearly whimper when he lets you.

He kisses your jawline. He kisses your cheeks, soft, lingering. Then the edges of your lips with the same careful tenderness. You let him find your mouth.

This is a real first kiss. Real first kisses never tire you. It doesn't matter who it's with, you always get that high, the warmth in the back of your head, the static in your chest, the feelings spawned from a crush newly reciprocated. John kisses you more chaste than you're used to, no tongue at all, but it's not passionless. You can feel something in every press, every flutter of his eyelashes, how he pauses to take a shuddering breath. It's goddamn saccharine.

If you were, say, doing this with some random dude you hooked up with through an anonymous message on the barracks bulletin board, you'd have your hand in his pants by now. But you'll let him lead, this first time. You allow yourself small indulgences— you squeeze the hand you’re holding, you thread your fingers through his hair. Thick and soft and clean.

The kisses don’t get hot and heavy. They’re pleasant, but they don’t taste like actual fucking is in your future. You manage to calm yourself so you don’t have this… situationally inappropriate massive erection. You’re grade school kissing, Dirk, stop being weird.

He pulls away an inch, mouth hovering over yours. You don’t bridge the distance, you keep your eyes shut and wait for him to continue.

“Spend the night with me,” he whispers.

You want to go along with him without saying a word, but because you’re a cagey, sarcastic fuck who doesn’t know when to stop, you ask, “Is that an order, sir?”

“Yes,” he says.

Okay then. He is damn lucky some deep horrible part of you enjoys someone else giving the orders, otherwise you’d consider this the start of a dubious consent nightmare. Also, it’s fairly ballsy of him from a personal sexuality level. Your thoughts must show on your face, because he jerks back suddenly. You open your eyes. His face is bright, neon red.

“I- um- wait! I don’t mean- I- I- don’t want to order you to _do it!_ ” he stammers, waving his hands around like they’re on fire. With how hot his face looks, they probably feel like they are. “I just want, some, um, intimacy, with you, specifically, if that’s okay! I don’t mean to take advantage.”

You don’t order a subordinate to sleep with you if you don’t want to take advantage. But he has no idea, does he?

“Of course,” you say, calm. “Whatever you want.”

“Whatever I want…” He thinks about it, then smiles, slowly. “I want you to come to bed with me.”

You don’t ask if this one’s an order. You reach for your blindfold, but he puts his hand over yours to stop you.

"I like your eyes," he says, smiling. "The slime thing is cool."

You voluntarily ignore he chose _that_ as the saving grace of your weird vision spheres. What the fuck kind of reason is that. 'Slime thing?' Seriously? You keep your blindfold off anyway.

He stands up, puts his glasses back on, takes your hand, and leads you out into the hallway, then to his bedroom. You stand at the foot of his bed, fingers laced. In your fantasies, this is the part where he throws you down and claims your ass in the name of the empire. In reality, he bends to you to kiss your knuckles, one by one. It’s sweet to the point of discomfort, to the point where you’re afraid that you accidentally might expose the raw core of yourself if the rest of the night is attentive as this.

He guides you to sit on the bed, directing you like the lead in a dance. He pushes gently on your collarbone and you fall back, he crawls on top of you, kissing your neck, your chin, your mouth. You try to touch him, to work your hands up under his shirt, but he pins your wrists above your head to stop you. Which, on one hand, fuck yeah, but on the other… something’s up.

He’s not kissing you dispassionately, but it lacks something. Motivation, maybe? He’s kissing you like he cares, it’s not the fucking Business Kiss he gave you in death, but it still seems forced.

When you get a chance, you ask, “Hey, are you okay?”

“Yeah, of course,” he whispers, then moves to your ear. He kisses the tip of your industrial piercing. “I really like these, by the way. They’re pretty hot.”

“Lucky you,” you murmur. “I have more.”

"Oh," he says, laughing nervously. "Exciting."

He moves back to your mouth, but now you're convinced something’s wrong. You nudge your thigh up, gently, between his legs. Yeah, not the throbbing, weeping, rock hard erection you were hoping for. You don’t even think he’s got a halfsie. 

“John,” you say, harsher. “Is something wrong?”

He pulls back to prop himself up over you, to blink at you all confused. “No? Why?”

“You don’t seem like you’re motivated to continue.”

It looks like he’s going to keep denying it, but instead he exhales, sits up, and runs a hand through his hair. You sit up with him, wait for him to explain. “I’m sorry,” he sighs. “I’d really like to have sex with you, Dirk, like, I _really_ want to. But I… I don’t think I’m up to it right now.”

As you’re wont to do, you leap to the worst possible conclusion. 

“John,” you say, a bit choked up. “John, I swear, if you’re just experimenting and using me as some kind of sexual test dummy because I’m available, I’m quitting my job and leaving tomorrow.”

"No! No, I would never do that to you, _please_ ignore Sergeant John down there," he stammers, his face flushing a velvet red. He must see something in the expression you’re making, because he jumps right into flattery. “I- I like how you look. I like how your skin and your hair contrast, like it’s _so cool_ , and I like how you're built, and I like how you're conveniently pocket sized. I want to- I want to do some things to you that I really hope you'll like. I- I think there _is_ a part of me that’s super curious about being with a guy, but most of me enjoys your company, and thinks you’re hot, and wants to make you feel good. I want to do nice things for you, since you’ve really done a lot for me.”

You feel a whole lot better, warm and flattered even, although you still have reservations about his motives. Instead of saying so, you defer to humor. "Do you actually call your dick that."

"As chief commander of the state I can assign military rank at will," he rattles off. "So I really have no choice, since that's now my dick’s official title. It is law."

"You have a smorgasbord of titles at your command and you go with 'Sergeant'? You know what would be better? Commodore. Captain. Admiral. Anything seaman related."

He giggles at your joke, then presses his thumb to your brow and draws it along the length. "Has anyone ever told you that you have really expressive eyebrows?"

"John. Stay focused. We're talking about dicks." You pause, for dramatic effect. “Sex isn’t only about boners, you know. There’s a plethora of other shit to explore if you want.” 

You _almost_ finish it off with ‘scale of one to hands free orgasm: how much do you like ass play’ but decide that’s probably not first-time material for somebody who might never have delved into that stuff. 

“No, I don’t really want you to try any… probably weird Dirk Strider things on me,” he says, laughing half-heartedly. “This happens sometimes. I just need some sleep. I’m tuckered out! But I feel pretty bad… here I am, initiating stuff I can’t follow through on.” 

He reaches out to you and pets your hair. He waggles his eyebrows and says, “Soooooooo I might not be very good at it, but… Would you like me to do anything for you?”

“Yeah,” you say. “Make me breakfast tomorrow.”

“Dude. I basically just offered you a blow job.”

“I know. I’d rather have your cooking.”

His face snaps into a grin, and he presses his hands to either side of your jaw. “That is the nicest complement anyone’s ever given me.”

He kisses you. You maybe should have gone with the blowjob. But _pancakes,_ man. Pancakes.

You get ready for bed with him, even though it’s only 9pm. You’re used to getting sleep when you can, and you figure John really does need it, so you don’t complain too much. Besides, you enjoy the domestic shit more than you let on, and getting lent a pair of drawstring pajama pants is a goddamn _joy_. You do refuse the shirt. Fun as it is wearing the object of your affection’s clothes, you’re a picky sleeper and get uncomfortable if you’re too stifled by fabric. John does not share your sentiment. 

You also get the chance to observe what his room looks like, as you were distracted the first time you were in here. His room is _excruciatingly_ plain. White walls with no decoration but the alchemic lamps, white bedspread, white pillows, white chest of drawers in the corner (he must have a full wardrobe in some other room), white bedside table with a book on it on it, stumpy white bookshelf containing an array of non-alphabetized shitty pulp fiction. The most interesting things are the massive windows on either side of his bed, floor to ceiling, covered in thick dark blue curtains, and the four poster bed with matching dark blue canopy. He, or some mysterious maid you never see, cleaned it up since you were last in here. The bed is made with military precision, which you think is weird. It smells far more pleasant, still like him, but also like clean laundry.

You wash your face and perform other such utilitarian tasks in that swank ass bathroom with him. He has… a bunch of extra toothbrushes, for some reason, and then you think about it for two seconds and know _exactly_ why he has extra toothbrushes, and then you wonder how many girls he sleeps with on the regular and you think about Roxy in his bed and feel your stomach crawl up into your throat. It’s a goddamn _miracle_ that you didn’t think of that earlier and let it ruin your night, but better late than never. You’re about to spiral into a dissociated state of complete inner suffering when John chirps, toothbrush hanging out of his mouth, “Hey, can I touch your butt?”

You snap your head to look at him. “That’s what it’s there for. My ass is the apex of sexual selection, evolved into a perfect shape for cupping.”

“I’ll be the judge of that,” he says, and proceeds to do a terrible job of judging your butt. You are definitely not a, quote, “10/10,” no matter how much he insists on it. 

It distracts the hell out of you, though. You feel too fucking melty and warm with him to stray from the path of positive feelings for long. You’re sure you won’t feel the same way tomorrow.

You climb into bed with him, make out a bit before he turns off the lights with a wave of his fingers. He spoons you, laces and unlaces his fingers with yours over and over, whispers some lame jokes about how you chose _breakfast_ over a _blow job,_ jeeeeeeeez what kind of guy even _are_ you, into your ear. You don’t need to hide your smile— the bedroom is a near-perfect pitch black. 

Once he shuts up, he falls asleep in ten seconds flat. Not even a light sleep, it's like a mouth open, gently snoring, completely conked out sleep. You won’t be able to fall asleep in his arms (you need as much room as fucking possible to even consider transitioning into dreamland), nor will you be able to sleep with even a minuscule amount of noise, but you’re not very tired anyway. You lay awake and try to reflect on the day, try to shove your toasty feelings of _what you think is_ a crush reciprocated and try and decipher how he actually feels about you, what you want to do next. You need to figure out what you want from him, whether you want just sex or something more. But your mind keeps flashing to how he kissed you, how good you feel even without sex, how, for once, you think you should just live in the moment. Your brain seems to be playing along with that idea. One of the few times in your life it’s done so.

After who knows how long, John’s breathing decreases to a tolerable volume (of nearly nonexistent sound) and you feel tired enough to consider sleep. You roll him off you, push him all the way over to the other side of the bed, and this fucker doesn’t even wake up. He mumbles something nonsensical, like a garbled string of vowels that drawl on for about thirty seconds, but then dips into a deep sleep once again.

Oh yeah, Vriska warned you about nightmares. You wait, watch the black lump of him breathe for a couple minutes, but nothing else happens. You roll over on your side, away from him.

You rest your head on pillows that are comfier than you’ve ever dreamed of, breathe in his scent like a total weirdo, and drift into sleep.


	19. Empty Head, Empty Heart (Part 1)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **!!Content Warning!!**
> 
> imo it’s way more fun to just read through and be surprised, but I don’t want anyone to be uncomfortable (there’s some _weird_ flavor of dubcon in here) so highlight here if you have any dubcon related triggers for an explanation of what happens and how to skip the scene if you want - > [Content warning for, are you fucking ready for this folks, sexsomnia. Dirk’s super into it, John isn’t awake, John says asshole things about Dirk while he dreams, Dirk’s an asshole for not waking John up immediately (he does eventually). Ctrl+F for the phrase “I'd like to see you, first.” if you feel uncomfortable while reading and want to skip to where they have explicitly consensual sex. Scene starts with John straddling Dirk.]

It’s the middle of the night.

You wake to John talking to himself. Still dazed by sleep, you can’t focus on what’s happening, but you manage to pick out the feeling of him next to you. He’s spooning you again, hugging you but not holding you tight to him, breath on the back of your neck. Also his hand is shoved down your pants.

“What the hell?” you mumble. 

He's drawing lines across your upper thigh. He's dragging his fingers from between your legs, where the top of his hand nudges your dick, to the outer edge of your hipbone. It's extremely gentle, his pointer and middle finger barely grazing your skin as they stroke you.

You are in a physical state of arousal, but your mind is too sluggish and sleepy to catch up to where your erection is. He must have been doing this for a while to get you so hard. You like being touched by him, but you wish he'd asked, first. It's mildly annoying to get woken up like this-- you need your beauty rest, dammit.

He mumbles some other unintelligible thing to you, but you're awake enough to tell that it's garbled nonsense. 'Nightmares,' Vriska said to you, a couple weeks back. You snap your eyes open. You're alert and coherent like a lightning bolt.

"John," you whisper. It's still pitch black out, you can't see a thing. You don't dare turn your head. "John. Are you asleep?"

"Stacking blocks," he mutters, as a reply.

Hell yeah, he’s having one of those dreams you can influence and interact with. Lucky you. Dave used to have these sometimes, when he was little, and you got all sorts of quality nonsensical catchphrases and dark subconscious thoughts from asking him stupid questions.

"What does stacking blocks have to do with my turgid member," you ask. Since you're a deadly combination of more awake and grotesquely kinky, your brain is starting to get _really into_ this weird-ass sleep touching. You shift your hips in the hope he'll actually grab your cock. He does not.

It takes him a while to reply, still slowly drawing lines on your skin. Your muscles start to tense, nerves tingling in anticipation every time his knuckles tease the edge of your shaft. "What?" he sing-song murmurs. "I'm so sorry I had to throw you away. I trusted you so much but you've got such a big heart, you're so smart, you’re so sharp, not like me at all. I'm so dumb, all I can do is stack blocks."

His tone is all wrong, emphasis on the incorrect words, elongating syllables that don't make sense. Another stroke along the line of your hips. You make an embarrassing whimpering noise you're glad he's not awake for.

"Let's have freaky dream sex, John," you tell him, quietly, to try to influence him. Also because it's fucking funny. "Tentacle me. Wait. No. Turn me into one of those human furniture monstrosities."

"Oh, sorry, I didn't think you wanted to do it while you're dying," he hums. "But I did eat your whole heart. You want me to take more now, duh, of course. I'm so dumb. That's how I stacked it, isn't it? I never know what it looks like until it's built."

Sexy dream cannibalism is less funny, but you'll take it. Your boner prevents you from fully thinking through what he just said. 

He pushes his body flush to yours. He’s hard as a fucking rock, like, there’s sleep-erections and then there’s _erections_ , the kind that could impale you through the chest if you tripped and nicked him at the wrong angle. Apparently he doesn’t just get nightmares, he gets _wetmares._ Great. Just peachy. That’s a verifiable treasure chest of deep dark problems, is what that is. 

“I’m dying right now? How’d that happen?” you ask.

“I don’t know,” he murmurs. “I’m too dumb. I’m such an idiot. All I can do is stack the blocks, somebody else comes to kick them over. I’m just trying to help. It’s the least I can do after I forced you into this.”

What the _fuck_ is he dreaming about.

“Forced? I’m here with you because I want to be,” you say.

“You’re here with me because you’re a whore,” he mutters.

You are both offended and blisteringly aroused by the slur, and decide it's long past due to get him up. “Alright, time’s up. Wakey-wakey, you son of a bitch,” you say, at normal volume. You shift, to sit up.

As soon as you move, he flops himself over the top of you. He pins your wrists to the bed, hard, unable to care how it feels for you. You reconsider waking him up when he smashes his lips to yours, ungraceful and primal. Fuck it, maybe you are a whore. You can let him sleep-ravish you a little, right? Even though he’s probably not aware of what he’s doing. Wait, fuck. On a scale of one to non-con cuckold anal fisting with kitchen lard, how ethically dubious is this. Probably around a three.

You squirm underneath him so you’re lying flat on your back, then thrust your hips up hard, bucking him over the top of you. He’s not alert of his surroundings, so his chest slams into your face and his arms hit the headboard. He must be in some deep, deep sleep, because this doesn’t appear to wake him up. You yank him back down so he’s roughly even with you, lean in, and sink your teeth into his shoulder as hard as you can manage. 

He wakes up fairly gently, all things considered. There's no wince of pain, no freaked out disorientation, just a quiet inhale. He kisses your temple _very_ softly, like an afterthought, then he freezes in place. You detatch your mouth from him. 

He takes a couple breaths, perhaps to calm his heart or get his bearings or even to cherish the moment. He slides his hands down your arms as he gets off you, like he can't bear to stop touching you. He straddles you, sitting up straight on his knees, and you wish you could see what face he was making.

"Did I hurt you, Dirk?" he whispers, and his voice is shaking, like he's about to cry. "I'm so sorry, I didn't think I'd have those kinds of nightmares about you and- Oh, gods, you must hate me now, I-"

You reach out and rest your hands on his hips, shutting him up. "No," you say, and try to make your voice ooze utter confidence. "Believe it or not, I kind of liked it."

He doesn't respond. He stays frozen in place. His weight is on you, and you know he can feel you hard as a fucking diamond, and you're pretty sure he's also still as hard as a fucking diamond, so you take a chance and hook your thumbs beneath his waistband. Pluck at it all coy. "And if you’re willing, I’d take more."

You hear him exhale, shaky. "I'd like to see you, first.”

He casts a light spell, a small, glowing ball forming in the palm of his hand. It's not very bright, but John hisses from the change in lighting. He sets it on the floor next to the bed, where it's more tolerable. Deep shadows with hints of warm light frame his face like brush strokes.

He rubs his eyes, adjusting to the dimness. You reach over to the bedside table and grab his glasses, hand them to him. He puts them on, blinks himself to clarity. He looks down at you not with lust, but with utter fondness. You kind of wish the lights were kept off. Intimacy rubs like sandpaper against your bones, threatening to open you up.

Thankfully, you have sex to focus on instead of that gushy romance stuff. He is, in fact, still hard as a fucking diamond, his cock looking pretty damn tasty tenting his pants like that. A perfect size. A bead of precome leaking through the thin fabric. A slight outward curve that is going to feel so good in your ass. You're overcome with a sense of desire that erodes your ability to initiate foreplay. You want him more than anything you have ever wanted in your life, and that's not even hyperbole.

The last bastion of rational Dirk prevents you from straight up ripping his pants off, but just barely. You look up at him, desperate, and he nods at you, fond smile still plastered on his face. Your hands are shaking as they slide his waistband down, hook them around and under his cock, and then give up on complete depantsing once it's exposed. You grab his bare hips, urgently.

"I want you to fuck me so bad," you beg, like a total bitch. To try and regain some sense of control, you order, "Now."

John laughs like he’s relieved, running his hand through his hair. "I- I usually like a little more… I dunno, buildup? But look at you, Dirk, I can't resist- I-" He frowns. "Man, I'd better have lube."

He gets off you, then flops onto his stomach in order to hang off the edge of the bed and look under it. He apparently decides that completely undressing isn't important, because he doesn't bother taking off his shirt or shucking off his pants. You at least get a great view of his perfect, supple ass.

It'll be much easier if you're the naked one. You kick off your own pants and hurl them across the room. You could wait patiently, but you can't stand not touching him as he digs under his bed. You shift next to him, rest one hand on his hip and use the other to grope his plush rump. Feels as good as you imagined.

"Heh," he says, into the floor. "I have a nice butt, don't I?"

"You have a nice…" Your brain errors out mid-snark. In lieu of finishing the sentence, you lightly smack his ass. He giggles, slides a little further off the bed to reach deeper underneath it. It sounds like he's got a lot of stuff under there.

You at least have it together enough to start an actual conversation, although your voice comes out choked. “How the hell do you not know if you have lube.”

“I dunno, I usually only fuck trolls and they have a fun little tentacle thing that you slide your dick on and you’re good to go. I use kitchen stuff otherwise.”

‘Kitchen stuff,’ you mouth to yourself, confused and horrified. He finds the lube under the bed, a clear, unlabeled jar. He sits up, twists off the top. It looks more like a lotion than an oil, but you're too blazingly horny to worry about it.

He pauses to give you some _eyes_ , the kind of eyes given when your partner wants to make love and go slow. He touches your jaw with his free hand, strokes your hair back tender as anything, and it makes you squeamish. You’re not sure what you’re so afraid of, your dick throbbing too incessantly to think through it. "Lay down," you say, your mouth dry. 

He does so, setting the jar aside so he can lay next to you on his back. You climb on top of him, straddle him, ready to fuckin’ ride. He rests his hand on your thigh, looks up at you with that same bedroom smile. You don't return eye contact. You grab the jar, dip your fingers in, and begin slathering his dick with it. He's no longer in a blue balled, weeping state of erect, but he's still got a pretty perfect cock.

The "lube" melts into an oil as it warms on his skin, and also… smells like delicious coconut holiday cookies. What the fuck. Okay. You're not going to think about it. It'll work. It'll make things nice and slick. It'll make your ass smell like a tasty snack. This is cool. It’s cool. It’s totally cool. It’s cool. You’re cool.

"Mmm," he sighs, into your touch. Something occurs to him, and he frowns, but his heart's not in it. "Wait, Dirk, shouldn't I… shouldn't I open you up a bit? I don't want to hurt you."

"No, I don’t need it," you say.

John nearly chokes. "O-okay?" he says, his voice cracking. "What the fuck?"

You ignore him. You shift up on your knees, grab the base of his cock, and lower yourself onto him. You're pretty dang turned on, not particularly nervous, and hyped that you're living the goddamn dream here, so the pain isn't bad. Get in the right mindset and it's pleasurable, the stretch of your body burning up your spine. Like one of those cleansing fires.

John finally does something besides for make gushy heart eyes at you. He clutches your thighs, throws his head back against the pillow, and whimpers out some basic bedroom talk, "Oh, god, oh my god, you feel good, Dirk." You're tight enough to feel his pulse through his throbbin’ manhood, and it's racing. Or maybe that's your own.

You get him balls-deep. His hips buck up, into you, and you're still settling in so that hurts in a sore, unpleasant way. "Give me a sec," you wince, placing a hand on his abdomen to stop him. It was meant to be more of a halting gesture, but you get really distracted by the kind of rock hard pectorals that belong carved into a marble statue, and can't stop yourself from slipping your hands under his shirt to feel him up. 

He laughs, warmly, at what you're doing, trails his eyes down your body. His irises come to a screeching halt when they arrive at your pelvis, the look on his face morphing into a wide-eyed expression of total shock. You’re used to it. You sit up straight. You have to clear your throat a couple times before your voice comes out steady.

"Is it the piercings," you ask, gesturing at yourself. "My cock’s been dangling in front of you for like, five fucking minutes and you _just_ noticed the piercings?"

"No! Well. Yes. But I mean. It's not that, it's just. You're-" His voice gets really quiet. "I just… I think you're bigger than me… Can we um, pause and compare real quick?"

"John, you are fully embedded in my ass right now," you say, wiggling your hips a bit. He makes a muffled whining noise as he tries to restrain himself from thrusting. "And no one gives a shit about penis size. It's about skill."

"… That sounds like something someone with a bigger penis would say," he mumbles, angrily. "Also, you definitely have more skill than me too! At least with other dudes. You're probably like… some dark sex wizard of dudes."

"You're right, I _am_ a dark sex wizard of anal, and these _are_ my focus talismans," you say. You flex your pelvic muscles, to make your cock bob enticingly. "Feed me your sexual energies, John."

You always do this kind of shit when having sex. You like to freak 'em out. However, instead of the arousal-horror gape you usually get from your partners, John open-mouth grins like he's fucking delighted by your dick tricks. Which is the objectively correct reaction. You wink at him, ironically. He detaches his hands from your thighs to slap them to his cheeks, his delightedness increasing exponentially.

“Okay!” He points at your dick, excitedly. “Can I touch it?”

You’re so goddamn deep into the act of sex that the fact he felt he needed to ask that question is absurd. You give him a ‘what the fuck, dude’ kind of shrug when you say, “Yes?”

He reaches out to touch your cock. He starts happily rambling. "I was thinking, ‘it's just the same as fucking anyone else except now I have genital empathy! I've never touched another dick but I'm reeeeeeeeally gooooooood at sex so I'm going to impress the shit out of Dirk!’ But then you throw this weird curve ball at me. I mean, like wow, it’s really really hot, but I didn't see this coming. Gosh, these things are cool."

You have two barbell piercings that criss cross through the entire head of your cock. The end effect makes it look like you have four silver balls suspended on the edge of your glans, one on each cardinal direction. Like some kind of dick compass. They aren't huge or anything. They're exactly the size of your industrial piercings up top, because you thought it'd be a fun matchy matchy kind of thing. If you had them for your partners' pleasure you'd probably gauge it up, but they're almost exclusively for your own stimulation. You like how the metal feels when it moves inside you, it sends this unique fiery sensation up your shaft whenever you stroke it right.

John happens to be stroking it right. First try. That little shit.

Big, full strokes, his hand wrapped fully around you, pressure on the ridge, where it matters. When he reaches the tip, he pushes just right, so the surrounding skin jars your piercings. You unwillingly cry out at the electricity that shoots through your nerves, makes you tense so you feel every inch of his cock inside you. You are _very_ turned on. The fuzzy feeling of orgasm begins to build up in your thighs. Another thirty seconds of this and you could come.

You bat his hand away so you can focus on not losing your shit in a hilariously short amount of time. You take a couple deep breaths, focus on reigning in that feeling of being on the edge of a cliff. You try to say something to him, completely lose track of what's even going on in your head, and just go for it. You thrust yourself along John's cock.

John digs his fingers into your thighs, makes a noise that's similar to how your own unwitting cry went, and hey, maybe he'll also last a hilariously short amount of time. You'd rather he come first, anyway.

Two more exploratory cants of your hips and he lets go of you to hold his arms out, like he wants a hug. You pause, let him gather his bearings. It takes a while. You're both edging yourselves so you can have continuous dumb conversations, apparently.

"Come down here and kiss me," he says, soft. It's adorable. Your heart can't take it. Discomfort flashes across your face, and you hide the expression too slowly. John blinks at you, quizzically.

"Actually," you say, trying to hide your fear. "Could you fuck me rough."

“Oh?” He gives you a coy look. "I would, buuuuuuuut… I'm too sleepy to move. I'm just soooooooo comfortable right now!" He pats his chest. "But you could lay down on me if you want me to lead? I can, like-"

He makes this strange lifting gesture with his hands, and you have no idea what body part the motion refers to. But sure, you'll take the bait. You climb off him, then lay down with your back against his chest. Your head is right next to his, cheek to cheek. He hefts your thighs up with his hands and holds you there, allowing you to brace your feet against his bent knees. He thrusts his hips up and somehow, magically, enters you again on the first try. Plot twist. Maybe _he’s_ the dark sex wizard of anal.

This is… a weird position. You don’t think you’ve ever been fucked like this in your life. You’re short but stocky, so not a lot of men have both the height and the muscle advantage on you to pick you up by the ass and use you like a goddamn fucktoy. You, uh, love this. A whole lot.

He has his head turned towards you, breathing heavy in your ear. You don't realize how starved for his kisses you are until you're like, right fucking there. His lips are brushing your cheek and you come to the realization that you are a weak piece of shit. Your fear evaporates with his touch and is replaced by something much worse.

You want it down to your very bones. You want him to fuck you until your soul groans. You want his words, his touch, his heart, his love. You want get to know him so well that you understand exactly what goes through his mind and heart every second of every damn day, that only you know how to make him happy, both body and soul. You want the filthiest kink of all: tender, loving sex with someone you adore. And even filthier: you want the pillow talk afterwards, the cuddling, the eye contact. You want to fall in love again.

You hope those wants are just temporary. You're going to chalk it all up to being in a hormonal state of pure erection. You're sure they'll go away once you come.

Nonetheless, you give in to your horrendous desires. You kiss him passionately. Lovingly. With gasping and tongue and not a damn care in the world, like all his shitty pulp novels. He rewards you with this pleased little hum that resonates between your legs, and thrusts deep into you.

He does good on his word, fucks you rough. He doesn’t bother with slow speeds, just rapid-slams into you like he’s two minutes from orgasm. You are dead certain you'd come instantly if you touched yourself at all, so you grip his arms and focus on the sound and feeling of him sliding in and out of you.

Getting fucked like this is certainly rubbing a spot that usually doesn't get stimulated with penetrative sex. In fact, you gave up on the average dick being able to satisfyingly scratch that sweet, interior itch. But he’s hitting that sensitive bundle of nerves like a goddamn marksman. Every inch of your skin feels like it’s on the edge of bursting into fireworks, each time he thrusts into you.

You get to the point where neither of you are coherent enough to do anything remotely in the same category as making out. You're essentially just breathing each other’s air. You stop caring about lasting longer than him— you’re both desperate and wanting.

You lose awareness of the rest of the world, your mind finally shutting off, your head focusing on your thighs, your dick, John inside you. You feel yourself tip over onto the edge of orgasm. You clearly think the words, 'Huh. This is new,' before proceeding to come through your ass. 

You try to inform him, but instead you end up blurting out a jumbled string of nonsense that might involve John's name. You spill all over yourself as heat and tension immerses you, your body seizing as you ride out a long one. John stops thrusting towards the end of it, which, _thank god,_ you might actually die if he tried to fuck you past this.

You collapse, boneless, onto his chest. You notice his hands are shaking, still holding your thighs up.

"I- Dirk- Please-" he begs, heady and fast. "I'm so close, please, just a little more-"

“Wha- yeah. Yeah.”

He slams back into action. You don’t actually die; your ass is so weirdly over-sensitized that it loops around into feeling nothing at all. You are already checked out. You are fucked into oblivion. Mentally, you have a bathrobe and a mudmask on and are drinking a nice cup of tea. You’d totally zone out of what was going on down below if it wasn’t for John, insistently pleading, “Say my name.”

You’re too fucked stupid to be suave. “What? Shit. John. _John._ ”

This doesn’t seem to be what he wanted, he makes a ‘nnnn’ noise that you think is in the negative. Your brain is worthless at the moment, so you pull from your heart when you start rambling. "You're doing such a good job John, I’m so- I fucking love what you’re doing to me, John, I love-”

You feel his cock tense, but everything past the rim is still freaking the fuck out, so you don't feel what he's pumping into you. His noises make up for it, gasping into your ear, like he wants to cry out your name but his brain is too plowed into exhaustion to do it. He hugs you tight to him, wrapping his arms around your waist as he finishes off. He breathes deep into your hair, after a while you swear he's laughing on each exhale.

You're panting and tired and everything smells like sex. You want to be kissed. You want to have sweet nothings whispered in your ear. Your body aches to be held. Not just in general, but by him specifically. Which. Oh no. Oh fucking no.

He pulls out of you, shaking, and you slide off him, lay down flat at his side. He takes your hand before you can prevent it, laces your fingers with his, and brings your knuckles to his mouth. He kisses them as he calms down, looks at you with glimmering sapphire orbs that _you refuse to gaze into, fuck him._ Good thing he can't tell when you're not making eye contact.

"That was… that was really, really great, Dirk," he sighs, excitement on every tired word. "But next time we do that, can we go slower? I feel like we've broken some rules by not doing it in missionary the first time, so I want to make up for it!"

"Mmm," you say, noncommittally.

He starts to pull you in, to hold you, to do every filthy thing your heart desires, but you cannot let yourself fall. You put your hand on his chest to stop him. At least you have plenty of excuses up your metaphorical sleeves. "Towel," you demand.

He shifts to blink at you, like he doesn't know why you're asking, then glances down and giggles. "Oh, hold on. I'll take care of it."

This fuck, this absolute bulge, this goddamn snake of a human proceeds to dip down and lick it all off you. He transforms it into this sweet gesture too, kissing your stomach to clean you up, then your shaft, tongues your piercings that stick out a bit when you’re soft. Feels good, like a massage. He even has the gall to look like he's enjoying it. He pops back up, probably to demand more hugs. Avoidance tactic #2.

"You forgot my asshole."

He's not even fazed. "Ha ha, jeez. Whatever you say, princess."

You kick him away before he can slide lower. "Dude, no, that was a joke. It is four o'clock in the morning and there is no possible way a rimjob will be remotely pleasant for anyone."

“I dunno, your butt smells pretty good. What did I give you, anyway?” he asks, damn well knowing what he gave you.

You elect to cover your face with both hands and lay quiet in mock protest. John finds this hilarious.

You convince him to get out of bed with “I am going to ooze coconut flavored backwash jizz over the sheets” which defers the looming threat of intimate pillowtalk cuddling, at least for a little while. He demands that you, the “bath master,” draw the both of you a bath, while he makes tea. You reluctantly put your pajama pants back on, John hands you the light orb to carry like a candle (it feels like a soap bubble between your palms), and gives you a parting kiss with a peck on the forehead. The hallway is cold and lonely and dark without him, and you hate yourself for thinking that.

You set the orb down on the far edge of the bath, letting it cast a subtle, warm orange glow around the bathing room. You turn the water on, steaming hot. You clean yourself up and whatnot as it fills.

The bath is set up with a step/seat along the entire rim of the pool. When you stand in the middle, the water is deep enough to hit mid thigh. It feels good as it laps against your skin, just like you imagined. You turn the water off, let it all settle.

You trace the tips of your fingers along the smooth, clear surface of the water, watching the little ripples shimmer in the dim light. You sink to your knees, slowly, so as not to disturb the perfect plane of calm water. You close your eyes, breathe, saturate your lungs with air, focus on the warmth soaking bone deep. Then, you take a final breath and drop fully underneath the surface.

You can hold your breath for a couple minutes without effort-- if your heart is calm and you're not moving. You hug your knees to your chest and let yourself think.

You think you’re falling for him. The sex triggered something in you. 

You can’t fall in love. You’re going to fuck him up, if you do.

But you feel _too good_ right now. Your body and emotions are affecting your logic, you can't twist your thoughts in a way where falling for him becomes a bad thing. You want to help him. You want to give yourself up for him, you want to do anything he asks because you know he'll give something worthwhile in return, nourish your heart with whatever he can. And you know he's struggling, you know he's going through hard times, and you want to make it all better. You want to fix his life for him, you want to give him better ways to cope, want to stop him from having to die all the time, because he's slowly becoming a precious staple of your life.

You want to see him shine. And you want to get him there.

You feel him enter the water. He sits on the step next to you, bumping you with his legs. He reaches down to touch your face, stroking your cheek with the back of his hand. Your mind is saturated with sleep, too tired to prevent yourself, so you turn your head to press a kiss to his knuckles. He pets back your hair as a reply.

You decide the water is lulling you somewhere dangerous, and stand up. Your hair has an abnormal cut to it in order to support your sweet stying choices, so it fully covers your eyes when it's limp and wet. You brush out as much of the moisture as you can over the water, then slick it back out of your face.

He’s sitting on the step of the pool, two mugs at his side. He smiles at you in a way that makes you want to give up the struggle, fall into his arms, caress him, have him eat your heart whole. And what’s so bad about that?

"Hey sleepy head," he murmurs. He holds out a mug to you, smells like cinnamon and licorice root. "Don't worry, it's herbal, so you can go back to bed if you want."

You don’t reply. Blue eyes meet yours, flickering with orange light. He trails them up and down your body, taking his time, returns to gaze at your face. He raises an eyebrow, a tug on the edge of his mouth, smirking like he’s pulled off a successful trick.

"Oh?" he says, curiously, and sets the mug down, well away from the edge of the tub. He damn well knows you're not going to drink that.

He places his hands on your waist, looking up at you like you are an object to be worshiped. He leans in and kisses along the bones of your hips, slow, reverent, all the way down your pelvis. It should turn you on, but instead it makes your head float, your heart light. You sink down between his legs, and he opens his arms for a hug, which you greedily take.

You enjoy the warmth from the water, from your heart, from him. Feel him stroke your back as he sips his tea, as he wraps his legs around your body. You can't ever remember feeling this content in your life.

So. Yeah. You guess there wasn't really another option.

You let yourself fall.

What can you say, you love a project.

"Hey," he whispers, stroking your hair. "What do you want for breakfast?"

"Pancakes," you sigh.

He chuckles. "… You, uh, sound like you really love pancakes there, dude."

"Yeah," you breathe.

You lay your head on his shoulder, wrap your arms around him. You get comfortable. You get toasty. You’re not sure how, but you manage to fall asleep.

Probably for ten minutes or so. The water's still warm when John stirs you, gently shaking your shoulder. "I'm really sorry to wake you up, but I cannot stand soaking in this weird DirkJohn soup any longer. How the heck can you take, like, multi hour long baths?"

"Muh," you say, too tired and bleary to think of forming your mouth into words.

"A thorough response, I now suddenly understand everything," he says. "Well, let's dry off. I'll take you back to bed."

He shifts you, helps you out of the tub all gentle, like he's afraid of breaking you. You’re barely awake enough to walk. You try, pathetically, to restyle your damp, bedheaded, post-sex hair in the mirror, and give up when John ruffles your head with a towel after ten seconds. "Fuck you," you manage, although the sting is lost by your tired voice.

"Next time," he says, kissing your cheek and hanging the towel over your shoulders. You're off your game, so you don't catch the implication until you're well into drying yourself off. Yeah. Yeah, that sounds nice.

He tosses you pajama bottoms that you'd rather not wear, but you don't bother arguing. Once John’s drained the bath, he scoops you up into his arms to carry you back to his bed. You loop your arms around his shoulders and… and you fucking love this. You don't want to, but you can't help it. Your heart throbs and your blood pounds and you press stupid romantic kisses to his neck as he carries you. It feels so addicting, to love something, someone.

He climbs in bed with you, but he doesn't lay down. He sits against the headboard. You're too tired to think anything of this, you curl up next to him and lay your head on his lap. He laughs, pets your hair. You might start purring.

"I won't be able to go back to sleep," he says, happily. "Do you mind if I read? The light will be pretty dim."

"Go for it," you mumble.

You pass out before he even reaches over to grab the book on the nightstand.


	20. Empty Head, Empty Heart (Part 2)

You wake up to the sound of something clattering on your beside table. 

“Good morning,” murmurs John, from somewhere to your left. You smell coffee and warm cinnamon-apple.

It’s early morning, pre-sunrise, judging from the pale blue color of the light filtering through cracks in the curtains. You sit up and rub the black crusty sleep away from your eyes. You’re well rested, sexually satisfied, and are currently the recipient of breakfast in bed by someone you— yup, still love. You feel blessed as all hell.

"Mornin', sunshine," you say. 

He climbs into bed next to you, hair still messy, pajamas still donned, with a plate of pancakes and coffee in hand. He swings his legs under the covers, smooshes them next to yours, sets his plate down on the mattress. "Made you breakfast, as thou soest asketh of me. I even made them pretty," he says, reaching across you to point eagerly at your plate.

They _are_ pretty. Three thick pancakes are arranged over each other, a generous pile of cinnamon-syrup drenched apples stacked on one, and a dollop of whipped cream with artfully spattered powdered sugar asymmetrically flung on the other two pancakes. Rings of caramel sauce are swirled around the whole plate. He didn't prettify his own pancakes like he did yours.

“You spoil me,” you say, and you mean it.

He blinks at you, then touches his free hand to his cheek and flashes you a crooked grin. “D’aww. You’re smiling. It makes it even cuter because you never smile. It's like sighting a rare butterfly or something."

You immediately stop smiling and give him a totally baffled look. "I think the only person who ever called me a butterfly before was Dave, and it was steeped in ten levels of pure, melted down irony."

"Well now I feel lame."

"You shouldn't," you say, grabbing your plate of pancakes and utensils, placing them on your lap. "Dave is the coolest person I know."

He's silent for a bit, mulling this over. "Oh my god," he finally says, horrified. "You're serious."

You cut a chunk of pancake, get as much of the extraneous sugary goop on it as you can, then pop it in your mouth. Soft, sweet apples that were canned in syrup contrast with the sponge of the cake, fill your mouth with cinnamon caramel goodness. You know this kind of shit isn’t his specialty, but he did pretty damn good on it. Besides, you can’t fuck up a pancake.

You glance at John, fork in his left hand and coffee in his right, dim blue light outlining his messy bedhead. He looks happy, but not in the same heart-eyed gushy way that you’re feeling happy. It’s that same generic-happy smile he always wears.

"What were you dreaming about last night," you ask.

John freezes, like a cat furring up, and turns his head away from you. It takes him a while to respond with, "Nothing fun."

“Eye of the beholder. I found it pretty fun,” you say. He flicks his gaze back to you, pops a judgmental eyebrow, and shoves four layers of pancake in his mouth in order to avoid saying anything. You sigh. “Do you have nightmares often.”

"Uh, I probably have a normal amount of nightmares, that are about normal things, things a totally normal person would dream,” he says, mouth full.

You take another bite of your own breakfast, to buy time, figure out how to get him to tell you what he was dreaming about. You notice you’re doing that thing where you delve into the other person’s psyche and root around, where your inhibitions are lowered due to love and you're less willing to stop yourself. You decide on, “Yeah, totally normal. Like nightmares where you’re hurting people? I get those. One time I had a dream I punched Rose through a building made of dirty socks starched with their own grime.”

He swallows down his pancakes. "Yeah, like those! Well, minus the socks. But they're the _worst._ Like, I have dreams I'm a kid and I'm making it storm even though I know Jade's playing in the forest, or I'm watching Jake getting beaten to a pulp and doing nothing to stop it, or I'm letting Feferi drown in that lake we used to go swimming in, or- or…"

"What about me?"

He looks down at the sheets, a neutral expression on his face. You're such an ass, for insisting on him telling you.

His voice is quiet, but steady. "You're really hurt, and there's no healers or anybody to help, just me. But instead of just, like, directly bandaging you up, I'm taking my time and cutting off your clothes, and me, the real me, is screaming to hurry it up because you're dying, but my dream self doesn't care, because he's- he's touching you."

You suspect Dream Dirk wasn’t keen on getting touched like that. You also suspect he’s not revealing the full picture to you, so you ask, “Let me guess: Dream John happened to manipulate the situation so I’d end up hurt and alone. Correct?”

He glances to the side. “Um. I don’t know?”

You wish he’d admit it, but you let it go for now. He seems pretty freaked about it, so you reach over and pat his shoulder. "You wouldn't hurt me in real life, right?"

"I wouldn't want to."

“Then there’s nothing to worry about,” you say. Even though there is something to worry about. But you’re here for him, now. You can help him. You take another bite of your pancakes. “These are excellent, by the way. Thank you.”

“You’re welcome.” He grins into his coffee mug. "I made ‘em with coconut oil."

You put your fork down and give him a hard stare. "I wonder what Jake will say when I bring him your corpse. Your corpse that I murdered in a crime of passion."

He giggles, sticks his tongue out at you. "Oh stuff it, like I'd make them with anything but _butter,_ you uncultured swine."

You shoot the shit for a while, and eat your breakfast. It’s nice, it’s delicious, it’s good to spend time with him. The more you wake up, the more fluttery the inside of your chest feels, the more you get this feeling that you’ve crossed a threshold and there’s no turning back.

During a lull in the conversation, after you’ve both finished eating, he looks at you earnestly and says, “You could stay in bed with me all day, if you want.”

You almost say yes. You know it’d probably lead to more kisses and sex, which you want, but… You’d feel like you’d be enabling him. He’d duplicate himself and then the duplicate has to do actual work, and who knows if that work is going to end up being more important than you.

“I can’t. My shift begins in three hours or so,” you say, thinking of an excuse. “Although if I managed to guess the time wrong and am woefully late, I expect to be forgiven, since my boss is sitting right here.”

He waggles his eyebrows. “You can be forgiven for a lot more than that, you know.”

“Another time,” you say, and you mean it. “When I have a change of uniform and don’t have to walk-of-shame back to my room in slovenly unwashed disgust.”

John rolls his eyes. “You and your cleanliness thing. It’s weird!”

He doesn’t let you respond. He pulls you in to make out with you, which doesn’t last long because neither of you brushed your teeth and you literally just ate and the grossness outweighs the jittery feelings you get from these morning kisses. 

You get yourself into a presentable state in his bathroom, which he continuously interrupts by bumping into you or ruffling your hair or saying something so stupid you have to stop what you’re doing, yank down your blindfold, and give him a death glare. You learn he styles his hair by washing it, then rapid drying it with a summoned minor hurricane. It’s a small miracle his coiffure turns out presentable, you think.

You part ways at the entrance to the foyer. His Patrician robes are on, swirling around you and drawing you in. You give him a long goodbye.

“Let’s do this again some time?” he asks.

“… _Any_ time, sunshine,” you say.

You walk back alone, hands in your pockets, almost whistling with how giddy you feel. Some guard you don’t talk to named Karl sees you smiling and spits out all the coffee he’s drinking. It’s a wake up call. Reel it in, Strider, you’ve got a long think coming. 

You manage to make your face flat, and with it, your thoughts. Back to logic, reason. You need to think about what just happened and what it means. When you enter your room and make sure your security systems are well and active, the cogs of your head are whirling at light speeds.

You are such an idiot for letting yourself fall in love.

You are going to reach your fingers into the cracks in his heart and deepen them, just like you did with Jake. You will try to fix and mend and craft until he is irreparable. Until he is broken; until he is ruined.

But what else can you do? You will die if you don’t help him. You'll have to try your best, but you know deep inside that your best isn't good enough. 

You know you aren’t able to mediate, to pick out these feelings. They’re too intense, too positive and warm. You know you won't be able to think of anything but him until you fall out of passion, which will take you 4-6 months on average. After that, you'll still be obsessed, but it'll be more like the calm, loving obsession you have with your friends and family. Just a bit more amplified since you will go out of your way to see your partner all the fucking time.

You shouldn’t call him your partner, not even in your head. He probably doesn't love you. It’s okay. He doesn't have to be your partner. As long as he has sex with you, as long as he's still your friend, then who cares? You don't mind. Really.

No. No, fuck it, you _do_ mind. The thought of him touching Vriska or Roxy or whatever other girls he sleeps around with gives you a sickness that’s nearly unbearable. You want him for yourself. You want him for yourself and that disgusts you.

The thick miasma of your insane obsessiveness begins to smother your thoughts. You let it in when you chose to fall for him.

At least you’re aware of it. That’s a step. Anyway, you know you can’t try to possess him. Loving someone should be about the positives, adding to them, not taking away. Besides, you literally just kicked off _some_ kind of relationship with him, whether it be friends-with-benefits or something more. Who knows what he’ll end up wanting to do with you. He could, hypothetically, want to be only yours.

It doesn’t make you feel any less queasy. You want him _now_. 

At least you’ve found a coping mechanism for this sort of thing in your adult years. You know that activating your brain distracts the shit out of you in matters of love. So you get to work on the thing you’ve been ignoring: the Alternian half of your dictionary. 

You settle in on your bed, not wanting another bath so soon, and open up the book. You’re not looking forward to it. There's more flipping around to look up parent/child words, it's not as neat and orderly as going through the Common section. You start on the Alternian letter that makes the "/ˈô/" sound, and begin scrolling through. You know a fair chunk of the words already. 

The first new vocabulary you stumble upon is the word "< _auspice._ >"

/ˈôspəs/  
noun  
1\. The third party in an auspice.  
2\. A quadrant consisting of partners entangled in the kismesis quadrant, and a third party. The third party prevents the partners either from fully committing to the relationship or preventing the relationship from spiraling into dangerous territory (permanent murder, large scale property destruction, killing tertiary parties, etc).

verb  
To act as an auspice, the third party.

You flip to the Alternian word for 'quadrant,' because you don't know what that concept could possibly represent. You find out that trolls have four types of romance, all equivalent to human emotions, but none of said emotions are love. There's one for pity, one for pacification, one for hate, one for cockblocking. Sounds inefficient. You're glad you're not a troll. You flip to '< _kismesis._ >'

/ˈkɪzmɛsēs/  
noun  
1\. A partner in a kismesis.  
2\. A quadrant characterized by hate. While hatred is the main emotion, this quadrant is dependent upon mutual respect. A necessary component of this quadrant is that the partners must be of an equivalent competitive level. Common mental states and feelings experienced in this quadrant include sexual attraction, rivalry, jealousy and possessiveness, competition, drive for dominance, and a need to cause the respective partner pain.

Huh.

Wait, fuck.

Alright.

You stare up at the ceiling in a 'what the actual fuck'-induced stupor. You zone out. You think. You wonder how kinky their sex is.

Probably god tier kinky. The bruises on his arms, the rope around his neck. Does he hit back? He must. Trolls have thicker skin, it wouldn’t show. You wonder how often they kill each other on purpose versus accidentally. You suppose it doesn’t matter. She's a necromancer, after all. And John's got a healer in Jane who will keep her mouth shut and a Death Priest locked in the basement for on-call resurrections in case if that 'need to cause the respective partner pain' goes too far and holy shit, John. That’s one hell of an enterprise set up for getting some freaky troll poontang.

You’re a part of that enterprise, too. It must have been why you were brought to the palace, because you can one-up her with your soulwalking talent. Can grab and wrench his very being from the claws of his partner just so he doesn't have to be the bottom in the next round of floor pounding cross-species intercourse. They're just two tops having an earth shaking, political, catastrophic battle with the end goal of not being bent over and fucked in the ass by the other at the end of it. You’re a gamepiece. You’re a tool. And being a tool stopped being okay with you the minute you ate that first meal with him.

This doesn’t make you as angry as it would have a couple months ago. Yeah, you might have been brought here as a spiky haired anal plug used in an elaborate hatemance. But you’re more than that, now. He brought you in for one thing, but has since realized you’re stacked full of unadvertised bonus features.

You flip the dictionary to “< _matesprit._ >”

/mātˌsprit/  
noun  
1\. A partner in a matespritship.

/mātˌspritˌSHip/  
noun  
1\. A quadrant characterized by feelings of pity and sympathy. Partners engaged in a matespritship are romantically satisfied by both helping the opposite partner avoid 'pitiable' behavior and paradoxically encouraging the behavior to continue, creating a mutual dependency. Relationships of this nature are often sexual.

So, what, he wants to put you in this quadrant? Because Vriska’s stretched thin and needs help managing him?

You’d commend him for his choice: you’re nearly perfect for it. You’re _trustworthy_. You’re _loyal._ You can’t resist a project. You have literally like, four fucking friends, maximum, so even if you do gossip about the mental state of the Patrician it won’t go far. He seduced you so you’d do things under the table, so you’d automatically be on his side, so you wouldn’t tattle on his feelings, so he’d have another person to get him out of bed.

However, you don’t think John knows your heart isn’t very big at all. You’re selfish. Manipulating. Obsessive. Those things won’t allow you to fit into the little box he wants you to be in.

Jealousy sinks deep into your bones, colors your thoughts. You don’t want a quadrant. You want his whole heart. He wants you to get him out of bed in the morning? Then you want to be the _only one getting him out of bed in the morning._ You want to be the one always at his side, you want to comfort him, you want to compete with him, you want to fix him so he doesn’t feel the need to use this dumbass quadrant system to keep himself stable.

And you know how to do it.

A future you unwillingly fantasized about returns with a triumphant wail. A monster you've kept inside you for so long opens the latch on its cage and steps out. It emerges not as a violent, beastly thing, but instead as a viciously calm kind of guy you play chess with on weekends. It starts to place the pieces on the board, take stock of what's there, and decides on how to start. The board’s aligned for you to take what you want. You've been around the block by now, know all the players, schedules, motives, everything. You know the few people you need to pull the strings on, and barring any outliers, know exactly how to progress in order to complete the process beginning to end.

First, you’ve got to be the only one helping him, so he isn’t influenced and wounded by unknown variables you cannot control. He’s got two, now three, quadrants filled: You, The Auctor, and Vriska. The Auctor isn’t a priority, she’s doing a _shit_ job of moirail-ing from what you can tell; she’s too busy with the succession crisis to do anything with John. She can wait until later. Vriska though. Vriska has to go _now._

You get up from your bed, pull out a piece of paper from your desk, and pen a quick letter to Jane. Words flow onto the page, but you’re only half aware of them. The rest of you is focused on what you’re planning, what you’re feeling, what you’re going to do for John. He needs you.

And you're going to make it better.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The next chapter is going to have a couple pictures in it, but unfortunately my tablet is broken so I can't draw them. Let’s all wave our fingers at Wacom and will them to release their new tablet line, so I can buy one and get drawing! So until then, no chapter updates.


	21. Dirk Makes It Worse

Jane,

Let’s oust her. Three days from now, I’ll start pulling strings.

-DS

*******

“Okay, go over the plan again.”

You’re escorting Jane through the old and unused parts of the palace, drafty and cold, on your way to catch Vriska after one of her war strategy meetings. The blizzards have returned in full, just this morning. Snow swirls and gusts against the windows, casts a dim gray light on the halls you walk through. You hear the wind outside, howling beyond the palace walls.

“We’re going to have a chat with her about how we think she’s affecting John and how we want her to ease up on him,” you say. “You need to be here because you’re the power token, as Heir and his cousin. It’s a baby step in getting rid of her, but it’s the beginning of a long con where we replace Vriska with a more encouraging support system.”

“Seems a bit slow to me,” she grumbles.

“Patience, young one,” you drawl. “These things take time, mastercraft planning, and a careful hand. We don’t want her to find out about this until just the right moment.”

You’re actually planning on speeding it up as soon as you’re able: getting her reassigned somewhere else, having her demoted, whatever you can manage. You want her gone as badly as Jane. Probably more now.

You turn the corner, into a very long hallway with a floor like a chessboard. Huge, old windows are embedded along the left wall, lead frames seeping into thick green glass that barely shows the blizzard outside. White columns are set between the windows, and the woman of the hour, Vriska Serket, is leaning against the one in the dead center of the hall. You and Jane glance at each other, then walk to her.

Vriska’s staring at a pocket watch dangling from her ostentatious pirate themed overcoat. Jane opens her mouth to say something, but Vriska holds a finger up to her, watching the clock. There's a fifteen second pause, Jane blows her bangs out of her eyes and says, "This is ridiculous. Mind informing me what you're doing here?"

"Hold your neighbeasts, fussyface, you're early. Give it a minute."

"Do you have some time based trap planned or what," you ask, dryly.

"More like, an always ‘fashionably late’ trap. Anyway, I _said_ hold on," Vriska insists. Another ten seconds pass, then she slams the watch shut and lets it dangle from her pocket. Her face has a big, happy grin on it that eerily reminds you of John. "Aaaaaaaand we're golden!  < _Alright, let's begin! First thing's first. I know you want to do nasty deeds to me, and mum's the word until you hand over that dangerous sword of yours. Like hell I'm going to risk getting stabbed and you dragging my corpse off to who knows where._ >"

You pretend not to understand her, even glancing at Jane like you're unsure of what's going on. Vriska rolls her eyes. "< _Get bent, Strider. I know you can understand me. I read those couple letters that outright said so._ >"

You think of Rose's vision, and you decide she's not lying. Vriska's had prep time, apparently. Goddammit. You’re so fucked. You’re completely fucked. Everything’s ruined.

Your brain nearly shuts down at your failure, but some iota of hope that you might turn this around in your favor keeps you going. You can, at the very least, grab some useful information.

"You've been reading my mail," you state. Jane gawks at you, horrified.

She laughs. "< _No, I've been reading *Jane's* mail. I've been creeping on her for a long while, now!_ >"

“Why?”

Vriska holds out her hand. "< _I’ll tell you… once you hand over that sword of yours._ >"

Katanas are hard to use if you're not skilled in them, and you are confident you could take her on in hand to hand combat if she tried to rush you or Jane. You unstrap your Unbreakable Katana from your back and give it to her, scabbard and all. She immediately shucks off the scabbard and throws it aside, holding the sword in front of her. You step your left foot back into a fighting stance, in case she tries anything.

"< _I don't know how to use one of these. But it suuuuuuuure does look sharp, don't it? I bet it could cut through steel!_ >" she says, admiring the blade. She flicks her eyes up to give you a menacing grin. "< _Relax! I'm not going to attack you. I'm just messing with your head. I know my strengths, and barbaric sword swinging isn't one of them. You could defeat me unarmed._ >"

“Right,” you say, a little unnerved. “So. How and why were you reading Jane’s mail.

“Excuse me?” says Jane, to you. She flicks her head to Vriska and repeats, “Excuse me!?”

Vriska ignores her, gesturing with your sword like it was a presentation pointer. “< _C’mon, what self-respecting politician doesn’t have secret master keys to the mail room? As for why? Well, because Jane’s been trying to oust John for years now. This venomous broad wants the throne! I’ve got to snoop and protect his position._ >”

You side-eye Jane, as best you can with a blindfold. She makes a gesture like she wants you to translate, but Vriska’s already continuing with her rant.

"< _I know why you’re here. You want to get rid of me,_ >” she says, quickly flipping open her watch and shutting it again. “< _But here's the thing, the fun fact of the day. You've been manipulated, Strider. You’re just a pawn of miss Heir to the Throne here. She knows that once *I'm* out of the way, John's fair game to unseat, and she's free to waltz right over and take the position she's wanted ever since she was a little girl! And she's going to do it before another kid comes in and complicates things._ >"

There is not even a question of doubt in your mind when you say, "That isn't true. He's her family and she loves him unconditionally, and wants him to get better. Not everyone is a manipulative little shit, Vriska. Not everyone is like you."

"What's she talking about," Jane mumbles.

"< _Not everyone is like me!? You're right! Nobody cares as much as me, nobody knows what's best besides for me, nobody is as self-sacrificing as me!_ >" she yells, gesturing wildly with your katana. "< _I bust my ass to keep this city safe every fucking day! Meenah fucking Peixes would be slamming her stupid manicured fists on our doors right now if it weren’t for me! But that's just peanuts compared to the shit I do for John! I am *solely* responsible for keeping the literal Patrician from having some kind of freakish breakdown! *I* am the savior, *I* am the hero, *I* run this fucking kingdom! I am *vital!* Get rid of me and you kill the pulse of this city! Get rid of me and you kill thousands! Get rid of me and *you kill John!*_ >"

You try to keep a cool head when you lie, "We're not trying to oust you. I just want to discuss easing up on John a little, to give him room to recover."

Jane glares at you with the 'not trying to oust' bit, which you feel doesn't help matters.

"'Ease up!?' < _Do you know what that means, you idiot? As soon as I remove my support beams, he crumbles like a frickin' dry grubloaf! And Jane's there to sweep 'em into the wastebin!_ >"

Vriska pauses to laugh at you, victoriously. Her Common comes out heavily accented, pushed through too fast to be thoroughly thought through. "I know I'm not going to convince you that you're just a pawn, Strider. You've been a piece of Crocker’s for too long. Which is why I've made some backup plans, of course!"

She proceeds to sit down on the ground, with your katana, then lays back, face up. You have no fucking idea what she's doing. She talks as she positions herself. "First off, I told John we'd be having a little meeting, so he'll be arriving soon. Secondly, he didn't believe me, of course, when I said Jane is after his office. So he'll need some convincing. Welcome to the game, kiddos, but I’ve won before you’ve even planned your first move."

She looks at Jane, grins, and says, "Checkmate, Crocker."

You realize what she's going to do far too late to stop it. Not even _you're_ fast enough to prevent her fate.

It's your own fault, really. You don't realize her end goal until she's swung her arm up, until your katana is already puncturing her sternum. She drives your sword into her chest with no hesitation, with utter confidence that she's doing the right thing, the grin on her face collapsing into a grimace of pain as your Unbreakable Katana cuts through bone and organs and muscle and embeds itself in the floor. You can't even get out the 'J' in 'Jane, heal her!' before Vriska is dead. Instant kill.

Her hand slips from the hilt. Blue blood trickles from her gaping mouth, seeps through her clothes, pools on the ground. Your katana wobbles, heavily slanted, the reach of it too long for the blade to be at an artistically straight angle. Jane bites her knuckle, to stop herself from screaming. Your mental abilities freeze up at a play you did not expect. You and Jane stand there, staring at the leaking corpse, for a few seconds.

"Why-" Jane stutters, around her hand. "Why did she- Oh, gods."

She turns to you, grabs your shoulders, and looks at you desperate and panicked. "Dirk, please, I am not using you, nor planning any sort of malicious scheme against John, I just want to help! I don't want to usurp him, I-"

"I know, fuck, Jane, I trust you. Don't ever doubt that," you say. You try to kick your brain into gear, to figure out the next steps. You force yourself to breathe slow. Rational thought starts returning to you. "We've got to get her out of here before John arrives. He's going to freak."

Jane takes a shuddering breath, then stands up straight and proud. "There's no need to panic. We'll just tell him Vriska framed you for murder."

"Yeah, that'll definitely work," you say, sarcastically. “Have him completely disbelieve the one person who’s helped him through emotional turmoil ever, in his life. Yeah, great. It’ll totally work.”

Jane scoffs at you. "John's not the brightest, but he'll believe us."

You hear a cough from somewhere behind you. "Sorry, what was that?"

You were too damn absorbed in your adrenaline and panic to hear John enter the room. You whip around. He’s at the way other end of the hallway, arms crossed, black robes gently flitting in the air. He just turned the corner.

You essentially evaporate from your body. Panic leaves you, energy leaves you, a detached coolness descends over your whole being and seals your mouth shut. You are completely unable to respond to anything. Welcome back to dissociation failure town. Population: you. It's been a while.

John's eyes go from Vriska, to your sword, to you, to Jane. You have zero fucking clue what he's going to do here. You cannot predict the rolling force of a coming thunderstorm.

He raises an eyebrow, resting smile on his face, looking patient, kind, totally normal. He walks closer to the both of you, calmly, arms behind his back. You don't notice what's changed about him until he's a few feet away from you.

On each exhale, his breath fogs in the air, as though he were outside in the freezing weather.

"Okay, soooooooo, what was the plan here?" he says, flicking his eyes curiously between all three bodies present. "Like. Kill her, then cart her corpse off somewhere wacky? I have to be honest, I didn’t actually expect her to be telling the truth here? But she predicted it down to a T. I mean, Vriska told me a thousand times you were after my office, but I never believed her? So… does that mean you were trying to get rid of _my Vriska,_ and then-"

"John!" snaps Jane, standing to her full height. "I would never _dream_ of usurping your station! I love you, _you know that!_ How dare you suggest such a heinous thing?"

You're not… entirely sure how helpful it is for Jane to be confrontational, but you can't say so because you're frozen with a horrifying combination of failure and fear. A gust of wind roars along the outside wall, causing the glass panes to rattle in their frames.

"Well, you have to admit, it looks pretty dang suspicious," he says, gesturing vaguely in Vriska’s direction. He stands over Jane, looming, too close, his breath steaming over the top of her head. "I thought we weren't going to be weird serial killers like the rest of our family? I thought we were going to be different."

Jane stands on her tiptoes to try to get in his face. "We are different! Listen, John, Vriska took Dirk's sword and killed herself with it, to try and frame us for her murder. She’s trying to fool you! She wants _me_ gone, dummy!"

John frowns, quirking his head, thinking about it. There's the sound of thick snow pattering against the windows, the wind shifting to direct the blizzard towards the palace. John's eyes linger on Vriska’s body.

"I don't know…" he murmurs. "Why would Vriska want you gone if you didn't do something bad to her?"

“You are such a fool sometimes!” Jane clenches her fists. "You're seriously taking her side over mine!? How many times has she tricked you!? When have I _ever_ tricked you!?"

"Yesterday!” yells John, finally losing his neutral smile. Outside, you hear a clap of thunder. “When I thought you stabbed yourself in the eye with a fork! And then the eye goo turned out to be mayonnaise!"

"That's not the same and you know it!" Jane yells, pointing a finger at him.

"I don't know, seems pretty similar to me!" His feet lift off the floor, levitating, inching himself upwards.

“Right. I forgot.” Jane narrows her eyes, and with a darkly serious tone, spits out the insult, "You wouldn't know good pranking if it bit you in the rear."

John's lip curls into something feral. He hovers over the two of you, then bends forward severely to make eye contact, giving the impression he's nine feet tall and being kind enough to dip to Jane’s level. His cloak is going nuts. It curls around both you and Jane, lapping at your arms and then lurching back like waves in a typhoon.

"Yeah, well, you wouldn't know good _style_ if it bit you in the rear!" he says, pain and rage etched into every inch of his features. He gestures, insistently, at the windows and the storm outside. "Why won't you let me order maintenance on this ugly hallway!?"

Jane, her voice quivering with barely held rage, yells back, "That isn't in our budget, John! You would know that if you had any whit of forethought in you!"

"Forethought!? That's what catastrophe insurance is for!" he bellows, and his voice is twisted by the magic pumping through him. It sounds like you're hearing him yell through a small tornado, like he's warped and distant. "You can't predict the weather!"

"Don't you-!"

John raises his arms as though to conduct a symphony, then flicks his hands out.

Every window in the room shatters. Glass and lead frames clatter against the tile, making a noise like the strike of a thousand untuned windchimes. The blizzard bursts into the hall with a furious roar.

Freezing wind blasts you, whipping your jacket to the left, causing you to stumble in its force. A pure white haze overtakes your vision, chunks of icy snow hitting you in the face so hard they sting. You lose visibility of most of the hallway, but you can hear the thunder, see the unnatural lighting strike the wall behind him with a dim flash through the fog. Another bolt crackles somewhere behind you, and you smell burning plaster.

He appears to be throwing some kind of stress-tantrum, of ridiculously destructive proportions. His eyes are wild, popped open, looking only at Jane. The royal blue of his irises flash neon in rhythm with the thunder.

Jane screeches like she's going to blow, her face contorted in violent anger. She looks like she's going to try to punch him out, stepping back on her right foot so she can throw one. You are completely unable to tell if this is godtier cousin/pseudo-sibling roughhousing or a life or death situation.

“What did you do!?” she screams. “What do you think you’re _doing!?”_

“I’m remodeling, Jane!” he screams back. “Because apparently _I’m_ the only one I can trust to make decisions around here!”

"We're trying to help you, you dolt! Don’t you get it? Vriska's making all of it worse for you! Dirk told me everything!"

You feel your soul perform a heavy-duty facepalm. John jerks his head towards you. His eyes are wide, horrified, whiplashed from one emotional extreme to the other.

"You said you didn't tell anyone," whimpers John, and you can hear the sob in his voice. He repeats it louder, more like a howl. "Dirk, you said you didn't tell anyone!"

You can't respond. Your heart and head feel cold, your face remaining stoic and statuesque. In the ten foot radius surrounding him, all the howling snow turns to freezing rain, seeping into your jacket and chilling you instantly.

"Dirk!" he wails. "Dirk!?"

“Just Jane,” you manage to murmur. But he doesn’t hear you.

He raises his hands towards you, some sort of spell forming in his palms. You’re going to accept whatever he wants to hit you with, you deserve it. But Jane doesn’t feel the same way.

She tackles him. Shoulder first, arm grappling his waist, leaping off the floor, using every one of her Crocker-tier beefcake muscles. She takes him down to the ground, his back hitting the tile with a soft thud. She doesn't wait for him to recover. She scrambles up to her knees while he moans out a pained "Owwww," then aims a punch straight to his face.

He dodges, shifting his head, and Jane's knuckles slam into the tile. A black square dislodges, a white one cracks through the middle. John flicks both his pointer fingers upward, and lightning cascades down from the ceiling to hit Jane in the center of her back.

She jolts, contorts her spine into an unnatural position, seizes as electricity flickers across her body. It's over in a second. Jane's eyes are rolled back into her skull once the strike courses through her, and all it takes is a gentle push from John for her to collapse onto the floor in a heap.

Through the fog of the blizzard, you watch her muscles twitch, her body spasm in the aftermath. That was too powerful a spell for plain sibling roughhousing. You feel bile in your throat, sickness in your stomach, and you say, "No."

John pushes his glasses up, then turns his head to blink at you, like he forgot you where there. "Huh?" he says, confused.

"You hurt my friend," you say, as you're drawn back into yourself. The panic, the adrenaline, everything returns to you with each pump of your heart. Jane stops twitching. John stands up, his eyes narrowed. Your voice comes out shaky, emotional. "I cannot fucking believe you would hurt your own family like that. What the hell is wrong with you?"

"It's fine!" he snaps. "She's fine! We used to tussle like this a lot! Chill out!"

You're fucking pissed. " _You_ chill out, you vicious ass!"

“Don’t tell me to chill when I’m chill!” he screams, clenching his fists, his feet lifting off the floor again. “I’m chill, Dirk! I’m ice cold, alright!?”

Your next inhale doesn't come. He's taken your breath away. You try to still your heart, to not move, to conserve air and figure out what to do.

Jane sits up, bleary eyed. She flicks her palms out, hands trembling, and a pale blue wave of healing light spirals over her. She blinks a couple times, shakes her head wildly back and forth. The raging, angry grimace returns as soon as she comes back to herself, and she jerks her hands towards you. You feel a soothing balm descend over the surface of your neck, and your breath returns with a violent inhale.

John gives Jane an aghast glare, like, 'You're cheating!' Jane twirls an imaginary mustache, eyes bulging and grinning manically. A bolt of lightning crackles across John's lenses.

Some very intense feelings are layered over your heart at the moment. First, and most importantly, you do not want him to harm Jane. You do not care if they’ve strifed like this before, you do not care if she’s one of the best healers out there, she does not deserve this. This is your burden to bear. He should punish you, and only you.

Second, you want to punch this mood out of him. It’s due to the screwed up lust you have, the bizarre fetish for beating a lesson into someone you want to improve. This is evil, and horrible, but you’re angry and in-love and have a hard time reigning your shit tier urges in when you’re emotional. You really, really want to fight him.

Third, and the worst of all: _how dare he choose Vriska over you._

You rip your katana from her corpse with a loud squelch. You wipe your sword clean on her obnoxious pirate coat that you hate. Jane says your name as a warning. A thin band of light from a ring hidden under John’s glove flickers, and he begins to summon a soulbound hammer.

You move into a fighting stance. Are you actually doing this? Really? What do you think you’re going to accomplish here? Do you think you can kill the fucking Patrician?

Well… yeah.

John lands on the ground, flatfooted, brandishing his hammer with both hands. The freezing rain transitions to sleet, then back to a blustering and violent snow.

“Stand down, Strider,” he says, toneless. “And that’s an order.”

You don’t move. And when he realizes you’re not going to obey him, he nearly cracks right then and there. He makes a choking noise, his hand goes to his mouth like he’s going to hurl, but he quickly suppresses it. He re-grips his hammer.

Your only chance is going in fast and hard. His hammer is a long range weapon, so you’ve got to get close enough where he can’t hit you easily. You already know Jane’s got you covered on the breath thing. And you figure you’re safe clone-wise: John clearly wants to catharticly beat the shit out of you. Punch the pillow, as it were.

You rush him before he can move. Two handed grip, fast thrust to the stomach. He deflects, but just barely, shrieking out, “Oh, fuck, jeez!” as he knocks your sword up towards his shoulder with the handle of his hammer. You’re about to slash your katana back down, but you feel the hairs on the back of your neck stand up on end. You roll backwards, dodging a bolt of lightning that singes the tile where you were standing.

He’s trying to get airborne, so you rush back in before he has a chance to get his toes off the ground. He’s forced to swing his hammer, create distance. You easily dodge it, duck under, go for another slash around his thighs. You don’t expect his maneuver: his cloak billows in the way, so you can’t tell where you’re slicing. Your sword slides through fabric, cuts it like paper, but hits no skin. You dive forward, catch yourself, try to fling your arm around to throw it into a roundhouse strike at his neck.

You’re too slow. He’s already bringing his hammer up. You minimize the damage by ducking to your left, so your right arm is the only thing in the line of fire.

You’re in the heat of battle, so you don’t feel the pain. You mostly hear the noise. The tear of fabric and muscle, the pop of bone, the spattering of blood. You brace yourself, calmly, as the spikes of his hammer cut through and rip your entire right arm from your torso. Leaves a pretty clean, jagged cut just under your shoulder. Which is kind of impressive. 

Your disembodied arm lands with a flop against the floor behind you. Eh, you’ve had worse.

John is, weirdly, incredibly distracted by this. He’s grimacing, his tongue out in a ‘bluh!’ kind of way. Jane’s already on top of this shit, your torso lighting up with a blue glow, the gore on the hammer shooting back into your system. Your arm starts to lift from the ground, the sleeve sliding off it, on track to reattach itself to you.

You get this strange idea, as you think of cuts and blood and John’s rage. You’re too fueled with barbaric fight-or-flight hormones to award this thought the horrible weight it deserves:

What if you don't have to get a perfect sword strike to win. What if you can simply… take his soul?

Your arm starts to re-stitch itself to your shoulder, with creaks and wet gooey noises, and you dive for his front. Jane’s healing is just timely enough for your nerves to start working. You raise your newly reattached arm to touch him. 

He throws back his hands so the handle slides towards him, over his shoulder, giving him the leverage needed to hit you this close. You smack your hand to his chest. You feel his soul out.

It's not the horrifying, icy cold plunge of 'kill me, please' that greets your paraphysical touch, not the willingness to die of the beta Johns. But you don't get the solid, anchored grip of a vital soul, either.

He's settled in, for sure, but it's loose. A tug from you and he'd give, come with you, leave his body. It wouldn't be much of a fight. You've never felt a soul like this, but you are dead certain of what it means.

He's so damn tired.

A calm sadness bubbles up in your throat. Your sword clatters to the ground. He winds up the swing.

"Oh," you tell him, as an afterthought, without any real input from your brain. Your voice comes out desperate, choking, in a state of near-laughter. “I can’t do it, sunshine.”

You have no idea if he hears you or not. The swing is already in motion. The weapon is weighty enough to kill you, even with this narrow an arc.

You feel the spikes on his hammer crunch through the side of your face, then nothing but a shot of numbing pain. You’re semi-aware of the muscles of your neck splitting like string cheese under the force. Hey, feels like it’s a full decapitation. Nice touch.

You’re dead in a half-second.


	22. Cephalophore

“Alright,” says John. “You have a lot of porn under your bed. More porn than I have ever seen in one place, ever, in my life. I think you have a problem.”

You have barely even opened your eyes and John is already talking at you. You try to move, but you’re bound by his shitty magic rope spell. Your arms are tied behind your back, your legs are cinched together tight at the ankles, which are themselves tied to the foot of your bed that you’re currently sitting on. John has his ass planted on your desk, which he’s moved over so he can kick up his legs around you, one foot planted on each side of you. He’s stripped down to black pants, a white shirt, an unbuttoned waistcoat, and didn’t bother to take his boots off before putting them on your duvet. You see a wordless scroll on the ground, the spell gone from it. He must have wasted one of Jake’s prepared resurrection spells on you. 

How’d he hack into your room. Why did he choose this locale. The fucker took your blindfold off. He’s painting his nails. And he is using your nail polish. 

"You're using my nail polish."

“I thought you were hoarding all this porn, like you had some kind of weird sex addiction.” He finishes off his last pinky in black, smiling, ignoring you. "But after flipping through all of it I think you drew about half of it. Which is neat, I guess. You’re a really good artist. I took a couple of my favorites." He pauses to point at a piece of paper sticking out of his breast pocket. "I figured it was fine, since I'm pretty sure it's _me_ you're drawing on some of these, which is weird, dude. It's super weird. I guess I'm kind of flattered, and you made my butt look choice, but it doesn't really balance out how weird it is that you're drawing weird pictures of me weirdly kissing you. Weirdo."

He twists the cap shut on the bottle, careful not to disturb his finished manicure, and sets it on the desk. You frown. “You did not need to go through my room.”

"I kind of did though?" says John. He smiles, but it's not genuine, and he leans forward, resting his elbows on his knees and getting very much in your face. You refuse to draw back. “I am _really mad_ at you, Dirk. I thought I could trust you, but you go and tell Jane all these things about me that I don’t really want anybody to know, and then you try to oust my Adviser? After you know how important she is to me? Yeah, um, I’m pretty pissed!”

“You didn’t need to use my nail polish, either.”

“At first I thought you were being blackmailed or controlled by the Renounced Empire, or Jane really was manipulating you, or heck, maybe you’re a new threat,” he continues, like he didn’t hear you. “So I did a pretty thorough scan of your room and nope! Nothing but horse dicks. Soooooooo many horse dicks. As you can imagine, I’m pretty confused about this betrayal. I thought you were my friend. I thought being intimate together meant something to you. I thought you loved me.”

You're not going to ask how he read that off you. You suppose your actions made it transparently clear when you had sex with him. Or he's just bluffing, trying to get a reaction from you.

You know what? Fuck it. He wants a reaction? He’s going to get a goddamn reaction. You know this is going to end terribly. You recognize this as the scene from Rose's vision, which means your jaw is going to be broken, at the minimum. What's he going to do, torture you?

_Bring it on._

“Good fucking Lord,” you say. “Is this your first time seducing some poor sap? Love’s a pretty personal definition, so I tried and failed to help you out in my own way. Don’t you know that people in passion do some crazy shit?”

“Well yeah, I do know that?” he says, and he leans away from you to blow on his nails. You feel the chill air emerge from his mouth. Dry instantly. “But the people who love me have literally never stabbed me in the back? Like, what the fuck, Dirk? What the _fuck?”_

You narrow your eyes at him. He turns back to you, smiling. “Anyway, another me is talking to Jane right now. And if he doesn’t get any plot-twisty information from her, then I’m firing you. You’re going back to the field.”

He thinks you’re a traitor, but apparently he’ll risk you running your mouth off or defecting. That’s surprising.

When you don’t respond, he says, “I’ll have Vriska make the arrangements.”

_There_ it is. He almost tricked you. Your final death will come at the hands of a trigger happy Vriska, probably a well-crafted ambush on your journey back to your station in the country. You bet Vriska would personally involve herself in it too, killing everyone in your traveling party, getting you to kneel before her as she points a blunderbuss between your eyes, telling you ‘Checkmate, Strider.’ It’s too good a narrative for her to resist.

You’re pretty much screwed here. You can’t argue your point that you were trying to help: framed murder or no, you did try to oust Vriska. Jane’s going to back that up too. 

You were very selfish, trying to take his whole heart. You deserve what’s coming to you. Maybe you should just let yourself march to your fate; you’re an abusive piece of shit making the world worse for everyone. But thinking of John, repeating the same cycle over and over, on the verge of breakdown, literally killing himself on the regular… That’s even worse.

Your mouth is very dry when you say, “I don’t want to leave you.”

“Maybe you should have thought of that before, I dunno, dunking your job performance into the tank.”

You stare at your lap, your voice shaky. “I want to help you so bad, John.”

“Jeez, what is with all of you? I’m fine. Gosh.” You can hear the eye roll in his voice. “Whatever. I’m making it official: you’re fired. You’re super fired. So bye, I guess. It was fun, Dirk… until it wasn’t. You really… you kind of hurt me, you know? Anyway, someone is going to come by and pick you up in an hour.”

He shifts, pulling his legs off the bed to stand up. Your pulse throbs, your head aches, you’re overcome with feelings of regret and anger and heartbreak. You have to stay with him _at all costs._ You will not let him leave this room without you, to continue his depression cycles, to remain mentally stuck. You will not be thrown out to die.

You know exactly what to do.

Your lip curls up into a sneer, judging yourself. This is _such_ a dick move. This is the dickest move out of all the dick moves you have ever dicked. He thinks you hurt him before? Buddy. Dude. He’s got a big storm coming. You’re going to drive a knife into his heart. You’re going to destroy him, force him to build anew. You’ve got a talent for it.

“Sit down,” you order. He does so. He puts his legs up again, feet on either side of you.

You glare up at him, refusing to blink. His arms are braced on his knees, looking at you patiently, with a flat expression. Waiting. You feel the black void drip down your cheeks as you bore into him.

“You’re not going to fire me,” you state. “Because I’m blackmailing you.”

“… Uh,” says John, not expecting that. He laughs, like he can’t believe you. “Okay? What dirt do you even have on me?”

You make a silent prayer to whatever minor god of logic is out there. That Karkat told you the truth, that you’ve got enough information to plan your way out of this. After your brief ‘amen,’ you say, "I know who killed your mother."

John makes a face like you just fed him rotten fruit. "Um… yeah!? Everybody knows, it was all over the press!? That’s a really rude thing to bring up.”

“It was part of a power grab machinated by Vriska, you, and the Auctor,” you say.

He tries not to react, he really does. But there’s a slight shift. A wide eyed panic. A sharp inhalation of breath. He blanches. You have, finally, said the words that trapped him in a corner, knocked him upside the head and stunned him, made him unable to dodge. He says nothing.

You can't help it, you crack a smile. You get a sick sort of pleasure from this. You're locked in. You might actually win this game.

“And you bet your ass I can oust you with that information. I can get you court-martialed for regicide, matricide, treason, etc,” you think aloud. “Because there’s two _very special_ people out there who want you booted from your office. All I have to do is write them a letter, and the third in line to the throne is here in the blink of an eye to back me up. Or, alternatively, if you execute me, there’s no way they’re not going to get suspicious and pop right back here as soon as they find out. You’re _fucked_ if you don’t keep me around.”

John stares at you, gaze totally blank, still no color in his face. He rasps out, with no tone at all, “You’re wrong. I didn’t kill my mother.”

Adrenaline is pounding through your head and heart, so you roll with it. You paraphrase what Karkat told you. “Yes you did. Vriska held the ‘knife’ and you rubbed her back. She made the plan and wielded the weapon and you pointed in the direction where she should stab."

"I didn't kill my mother," he repeats, his voice flat.

There’s something eerie with how he says it. It doesn’t sound like a lie, it sounds more like he’s trying to will it to be the truth. Like if he believes hard enough, reality will change. “Is that what you tell yourself? But you _did_ kill her. You stacked some blocks and Vriska came to kick them over. That’s how it works, right? That’s how you roll.”

He just… stares at you. Blinking slowly, like he didn’t hear you. You're going to be very lucky if he doesn't straight up eviscerate you after this. What would Jake do if he got his hands on your corpse. But you can't stop.

“Why'd you do it?” you continue. “I don't think you hated her. Your mother was a cold hearted calculator, but all signs point to you loving her anyway. You don't seem to want to be the Patrician all that badly, so usurping power for the sake of power is off the table too. She had to have done something to push you over the line. What'd she do? Fuck with your friends? Fuck with the populace of your kingdom? Fuck with Alternia? Or did she try to fuck with your family, your dad, your sister? Or did she finally just pressure you a _little_ too much, make you want to starve yourself for some sense of control again?”

You're nailing it. He doesn't know what to say. So he emphasizes the same thing. “I. Didn’t. Kill. My. Mother.”

“I get it, you weren’t holding the knife. No blood on your hands. You should keep telling yourself that. I'm sure it makes it easier to sleep at night. Oh, wait…" your mouth turns up into a wide smile. "That's right… It doesn't."

John fucking snaps.

You know he's going to do it, even before he moves. His eyes grow wide and angry, he clenches his teeth together, a gust of wind ruffles his hair. He lashes out, yanks you up by the collar, and slams his knuckles right into your jaw. Perfect form, power drawn from the twist of his hips and core… your face doesn't stand a chance.

He doesn’t let go, throws another punch straight to your mouth, and the impact of it whips your head back and you black out for a second, unable to witness how you fall against the bed. You become alert with your cheek plastered to your duvet, bleeding all over it.

Pain shoots up the side of your face, your mouth filling with the salty, warm taste of an open wound somewhere. Your skin is swimming with too much hurt to sit up immediately, but you can see John out of the corner of your vision. The color returned to his face, his hands are clasped over his mouth in horror. Damn, you gave him a distraction. He's boxed up his mommy issues and is now focused on his anger management issues. You don't want him to say 'I'm so sorry, Dirk! I didn't mean to,' you can't take that right now.

You sit up, slowly. It hurts terribly to move your jaw. You think some teeth are cracked, one of your molars is loose. You’re woozy and dizzy and pretty sure you have a concussion. You ignore the pain. You have to stop and let your mouth hang open for thick streams of blood to drizzle onto your chest and lap before you talk. You beam at him, all bloody gums. When you talk, it sounds like you’re holding a bunch of grapes in your cheeks. “So does this get you off, babe?”

John shuts his eyes, tight. He takes one deep, shaking breath, then straightens himself up, and slips into the Patrician character. You watch him swallow every human emotion just to face you, just so he won't crumble. He smiles, pleasantly, and steeples his fingers together in his lap.

“Okay, Dirk,” he says, like you're discussing gossip over coffee. “What do you want?”

You have a couple things in mind. You don’t know which one you’ll choose.

You are at the horrifying precipice of flipping alignments. The easy choice is to be evil. You could go full sociopath, say, “You” with blood dripping down your chin. Give him a disgustingly “unhinged” blowjob. Have him fuck you right here, get about four different bodily fluids involved. It'd allow you to pop right back to where you were in your plan, a beginning to the erotic, cloak and dagger long con to replace Vriska. Take that black quadrant from her, take _all_ of his quadrants through manipulation and seduction and dependency. And gods, that's tempting. You'd love to beat Vriska at her own game, you'd revel in making John and her into puppets of yours. She'd be an _opponent_ , with John the wildcard and piece shared between the two of you.

But.

You can't. People care about you. And you care about them. You've got to keep growing, and trying, and empathizing and _feeling_ , and stop being such a dark, shadowy son of a bitch. You've got to pull back all this anger, all these urges. You’ve still got to love, and not love in the weird Dirk Strider way where you’re obsessive and want to change people, but love in the _other_ weird Dirk Strider way where you’re obsessive and a backbone of support for your friends.

You spit out some more blood onto your floor, and try to look serious. You stare him dead in the eyes. You pull together something, how to help, how to do your best.

You’re never going to fix him. You should have learned your lesson a thousand times by now: your manipulations are never going to work. He’s got to fix _himself,_ which is something you can’t control. You can’t fill his heart up; you’re not allowed in.

But you _can_ control your presence. How you support his choices, what you ask him to do, what you do for him. You can’t take his whole heart, but you can at least be there for him as he tries to figure out how to section it out, how to repair it. You can shoulder some of the burden that’s wrecking him. You can give him time to heal.

You see a solution. The cogs of a stratagem begin to grind together, and while you can’t plan every minor detail while in an interrogation, you can at least fully form the broader arc of it.

“I want to be Vriska’s partner.”

He frowns, draws his head back. “Huh?”

Blood patters down your shirt. You hurt, you have to keep talking. “I want to be your Adviser.”

John blinks at you for a couple seconds, his gaze blank, before letting out a long breath. He shuts his eyes. He raises his hands, curls his fingers into the position you use to make your security systems visible, and flicks them outward. 

Gray-orange magic-circuitry lines appear along the walls and floor and ceiling, sparks running along very few of them. He must have disabled them before you awoke. Everything but the silence spells, anyway. You’re going to have to figure out what flaw he managed to exploit to do that— it must have something to do with identification based on your corpse.

He makes a couple flowing motions with his hands you don’t recognize, and the systems sparkle, then reignite fully in his royal blue. Everything —your alerts, your prevention system, info on who entered your room and when, biometrics, your locking spells— all go directly to him now.

You want to say ‘you’re fucking with me,’ but there’s too much blood in your mouth. When you open it to try to form words, it pools down your chin in a waterfall of warm, wet gore. Your vision swims black with a sudden shot of pain.

John stands, dispels the ropes around you, then scoops you up into his arms. You can’t fight him, nor would you if you could. He doesn’t pretend to be gentlemanly. He swings you over his shoulder to carry you, the way Jake carries corpses. 

You’re too woozy to keep your head up. Your blood seeps into his vest, his white shirt. Your cheek smashes against the small of his back as he creaks open your door. He hesitates, probably looking for anyone in the halls, then speed walks to the nearest window when the coast is clear. He balances you in order to kick it open, the large glass panel falling out and landing in the snow beneath with a soft pop. The blizzard roars into the hallway, albeit in a natural way. 

He climbs out the window with you. It takes you far too long to realize it, but the snow or wind doesn’t hit you. It flows past you and John like the bow of a ship cutting through water. John hovers, a foot above the snow pile, and casts some sort of windy spell to set the glass back in the window frame. You lift up, gravity welling in your chest, and the sensation of flying with him is so disorienting you nearly fucking hurl down his backside. The thing that saves you from getting sick is sweet oblivion— you pass out from blood loss, pain, head trauma, being upside down, air pressure changes, and probably some other things.

You’re upright when you come to. You can’t see much, your vision swimming with blackness, your senses dulled by pain and disorientation, but you’re sitting in a hallway, back against the wall. Looks like one of the hallways in John’s quarters. You hear him shutting a window next to you. You also hear Jane’s and another John’s muffled voices.

“Jeez, what is with all of you?” he says. “Thanks, I guess, but I’m fine?”

“Can you drop it already?” says Jane, and although her words are accusatory, her voice is soft and choked up. “There’s no need to play pretend. We all love you, John.”

The John in the hallway scoops you up, bridal style this time. You can’t be bothered to get your arm around his shoulder. You sag against his chest, helpless and bleeding. He fumbles with the doorknob while trying to hold you, gives up, and casts an overpowered wind spell to bluster it open. Jane and the other John are in mid-conversation inside the room, sitting in two separate armchairs. John has his elbow propped up on his own armrest, while Jane is leaning over her chair to sandwich his hand between both of hers. Fingers laced. They make the exact same horrified expression when you enter the room.

“Holy shit,” they both say, in a hilariously similar tone of voice.

John dumps you at Jane’s feet, in a way that might hurt if you had the ability to feel anything but your aching face. Jane drops to her knees, pressing her fingers to your cheek, adjusting her glasses to see how you were injured.

“I need to talk to you,” says the John who set you down. His voice is so serious it’s nearly unrecognizable. 

“O-okay?” stutters the other John, standing up. You manage to turn your head to glance at them. The difference between the two Johns is like night and day: one is concerned and emotive, the other is hollow and postured. The John that was with Jane straightens his back, to match the height of his double. They leave the room, shutting the door behind them.

“Hoo, Strider, you certainly are a sight. I can’t pull back the blood you lost, it’s too far gone. But this will do,” says Jane, wincing. Her fingers light up with baby blue, and your vision starts to clear, your jaw starts to creak together. Painless but still uncomfortable. “Are… can you even see me? You’re a bit… er… Are your eyes supposed to look like that?”

Once her light stills, blood begins to rush back into your head, clearing your thoughts. You crack your jaw to the side with the palm of your hand. Run your tongue along your teeth to make sure they’re all solid. Back to normal. “Yeah. Sorry Jane, my blindfold was discarded.”

“Oh, I see,” she says, voice shaking. She can’t make eye contact. "What on earth happened?"

The question brings you back to yourself. You flatten your face. You take a deep breath. You categorize information into 'safe to tell Jane' and 'not safe to tell Jane.' You piece together the best answer you have.

"I think I got a promotion."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Aaand that’s all the chapters I had prepped. Updates will be slower after this one, so be patient!
> 
> Oh also, this seems like a good time to showcase the fanart I received so far, since it might be a little while until the traditional end-of-fic fanart gallery. There’s [this frankly adorable depiction of the Strilondes](https://sweatersketchbook.tumblr.com/post/171070198071/some-lovely-eldritch-strilondes-from), which like, look at them, they’re so huggable? And also [this dope ass NSFW pic of Dirk deepthroating two dicks](http://naughtypelli.tumblr.com/post/170956291890/okay-so-this-fic-is-slowburn-and-the-closest), which is what we all really want from this fic, probably. Anyway drop me a link if you’ve made anything, I’d love to see it.


	23. The Lush Life

Ten minutes later, the hallway door slams open and the John with no nail polish braces his hands on the frame. He stares at you, makes a face like you just sprouted a bouquet of tentacles from your eyes, and bellows, “What the hell!?”

You shrug. Jane flicks her eyes rapidly between the two of you. John marches to you, yanks you off the floor by your arm, and starts to drag you out of the room. You don’t resist.

Without turning to look at her, he quickly yells, “Jane, I’ll forgive you if you take care of the cleanup for that hallway!”

“I didn’t even say sorry, you-!”

You don’t get to hear what scathing insult she had prepared for him, because he slams the door behind the both of you. He continues to drag you through his quarters, through long empty hallways. His grip is tight, digging into your bicep.

“What happened to the John that broke my jaw,” you ask.

“I can’t believe he did that, that doesn’t sound like me at all,” he says, his tone of voice in the restrained-cheerful range. He doesn’t turn to look at you, just keeps pulling you along. “After he told me all the important stuff, he asked me to tap him out! And it’s a tried and true Egbert rule that I always comply with my beta selves.”

You try very hard not to get angry at him for running from his emotions. “Where are we going.”

“My bedroom,” he says, casually.

You dig your heels into the carpet. He wasn’t expecting the sudden stop, so he stumbles over himself, drops your arm. He straightens up in a huff, and turns to you, annoyed. You narrow your eyes. “Why.”

He scratches the back of his head, then bites his lip with too-adorable front teeth. “I don’t know… You could really ask for _anything_ with the kind of information you have on me, so I thought… I thought maybe you might want something else instead.”

You don't flinch. "Don’t bother. I’m committed."

He adjusts the shoulders of his waistcoat, and you note that, in his breast pocket, he still has the fine art pieces his other self raided from your room. Glad he has his priorities in order. "Are you sure, Dirk? Really, really sure?"

You drew a couple pics with him in it, ranging from softcore to exceedingly filthy. You wonder which ones he took. Probably one of the vanilla kiss-y ones. Definitely the breathplay one. And maybe he took the vore one, because that one was fuckin’ hilarious. And while you'd love to indulge in some weird sex shit with him and multiple clones of himself, some things are more important than getting laid.

You’re thankful your eyes are exposed: you can give him one hell of a death glare. “Very sure.”

John folds his eyebrows down, glowers like he’s deciding what to do with you. You hear a door open and shut somewhere nearby, and another John turns the corner.

“Hey, just in time! Help me seduce-” says the John with you, turning around to greet his double. Once he gets a good look at himself, he continues with, “Oh… Never mind…”

This John has a handkerchief pressed to his nose, dabbing up a fairly intense stream of blood. When he shifts to wipe most of it away and shoves the cloth in his pocket, you see a ring of purple bruises dappling his neck. Just under the collar. He comes to stand next to the two of you.

The John with you raises an eyebrow. "Scale of one to alpha…?"

The bleeding John makes finger pistols at his double, winks, and grins in that naive Jake-way. It creeps you out. "Eight out of ten!"

The other John rests his finger against his chin, like he's seriously considering killing himself in order for the alpha John to prioritize whatever weird whips and chains shit him and Vriska got up to. He sighs. "Sorry buddy, I had a conversation with Jane I need to remember. Also, Strider is blackmailing us."

The use of your last name makes you wince. The bleeding John's grin gets wider. "Oh, ha ha, dang, really? Wow. Don't want to deal with that. Nothing important happened on my end. Go right ahead and off me."

"Okay! Glad you had fun!" says the John with you, and he high fives his double. The bleeding one vanishes with a burst of white, and the John with you shimmers lightly. You're comforted to know he’s whittled down to a sole identity.

John’s smile fades, and he sighs, pressing his hand to his forehead. He shuffles his bangs around before saying, “I guess you’re really doing this, huh? You know you’re… you’re going to work with _Vriska,_ right? Vriska.”

“I’m sure we’ll get along swimmingly.”

He puts a finger to his chin. “Swimmingly, huh? That reminds me. One time I tried to give her some help by hiring an accountant for her and they found him dead in the river two weeks later, and his corpse was too bloated to resurrect.”

“Good thing I made a blood pact with Jake that I would only perma-die through human taxidermy.”

He actually believes this. His mouth drops open. “Really?”

“No, but that sounds like something we would do, doesn’t it.”

He grimaces. “Kind of does, dude.”

You follow him around the corner, and he knocks on a closed door that is definitely not his bedroom. “Hey, are you decent?” he calls.

“< _What do you mean ‘am I decent,’ did you forget- oh, dammit, John._ >”

Vriska opens the door, fingers under her glasses and pinching the bridge of her nose, and shuts it behind her once she’s in the hallway. She’s alive and well, and doesn’t look like she just slam-choke-sexed John Egbert. She’s wearing the same thing she died in, with an added sword shaped boob window cut through her black shirt. She drops her hand and looks at you, wide eyed, then glares at John, accusingly.

John pats you on the shoulders so hard you stumble forward, and he blurts out, “Hey Vriska, guess what!? I’m making Strider here my Adviser, so you get a partner! Like a buddy cop novel! Isn’t that _great!?_ ”

It takes her a couple seconds to react. Her whole body tenses, her face collapsing into utter disgust. She looks like she’s torn between gouging his eyes out with her nails and throwing herself out the window. “No!?”

“Yes!?” says John, and although it’s pretty clear he’s angry about the situation, he appears to be enjoying Vriska’s reaction. “Anyway! I’m going to high tail it out of here and get people together to make the arrangements and stuff, so you have to show him the ropes! All three of us together, wow, best friends forever! This will be fun!” 

He puts his hand to his forehead, and his smile falters. He repeats, quieter, like he’s trying to convince himself, “This will be fun.”

He turns away. He walks down the hall, rubbing his temples, and states one more time in a dismal voice. “This will be fun.”

You watch him leave. Vriska recovers, leans against the wall like she’s the cool kid trying to corner you in the locker room. She’s taller than you, especially in her stupid high heeled pirate boots. You stand your ground.

“< _So what’d you do?_ >” says Vriska, as soon as you’re alone. “< _Blackmail him?_ >”

“Yes, actually,” you say.

"< _Your heart as black as your eyes, Strider?_ >"

"Apparently. Unconfirmed though; never been vivisected."

"< _Stop giving me ideas,_ >" says Vriska, grinning. "< _Anyway, I'm impressed. What'd you get him with?_ >"

"I know who killed his mother," you say, glaring at her.

Vriska reacts in a way that's completely out of left-field: her face lights up, her eyes fill with stars, her mouth splits into an innocently happy grin like she's a toddler about to open a big stack of Candlenights presents.

"< _Does this mean I finally get someone to talk to about it!?_ >" she squeals, clapping her hands to her face. "< _Strider, that was the best goddamn plan I have *ever* pulled off, out of a lifetime of awesome plans, and the worst part is I have to keep it a secret! I knocked a one-two punch on the Condesce and the Patrician, with minimal witnesses, *and* had a scapegoat. I got *everything* I wanted._ >"

"Which was?"

"< _I got a cushy job at the top, where I get to be the hero!_ >" she says, still beaming. Her face then relaxes a bit, and she rolls her eyes. "< _Well, okay, it wasn't what I wanted at the time, like, at the time I was getting arranged-married to John… and I figured once I killed his guardian and married him I could actually take over, and fix everything wrong with this stupid human country! But of course it didn't work out like that. I don't know why I thought it would. Uncharacteristically dumb of me._ >"

"It's because John aligned situations so you would think that way."

Vriska narrows her eyes and points at you. "< _No way! My thoughts are an impenetrable wall, Strider. Impenetrable._ >"

"Mhmm," you say, sarcastically. "So. You don't believe John had any part in your plot? It was all you?"

"< _All he did was step back and let me do my thing,_ >" she says. "< _He knew I had to do it. Since Feferi was hell bent on getting rid of Condy, he knew the old Patrician would have *absolutely* tried to stir up the pot with a brand new empress. So he did what was needed!_ >" 

You wonder how accurate Vriska is. You can buy her reasoning. You try to reflect it back on yourself, since you figure you and John have about the same level of distance in your respective maternal relationships. Would you kill your Mothers and take on an insanely stressful job in order to protect a country? Probably depends on the country— even though they could never really understand your humanness, they still raised you and your cousins, and you're rather fond of their tentacle-y incomprehensibleness. You'd probably sacrifice Alternia to save your Mothers, but it'd be vice versa for human territory.

Although if the Deeps implausibly waged war on any particular country, you'd do everything in your power to not let it come to that. You wonder if John tried anything else before jumping straight to murder.

She gives you a look up and down. “< _What’d he do to you after I died?_ >”

“Decimated me with a hammer.”

“< _Oh yeah, he’s done that to me too. Join the club._ >”

“I’ll make us matching jackets.”

Vriska clutches her heart, like you struck it with an arrow. She grins, manically, fangs criss crossing like a cave troll’s. “< _Oh Strider, it’s going to be a pleasure working with you._ >”

You can’t tell if her tone is sarcastic or gleeful. You try to match it. “And a pleasure working with you, Serket.”

She holds her hand out to you, and you take it. You shake like you're agreeing on a deal to sign over the goddamn country. 

She escorts you to one of the clerical rooms filled with wall to wall filing cabinets. You make sure to close your eyes whenever you pass someone in the palace, as you’re aware people are already going to stare at you. Since one of your sleeves is ripped off a la poor man’s muscle shirt. Gauche as fuck.

With the help of the two officiators on duty, she sits you down at a desk in the bland, manila-colored clerical office and hurls papers at you. You go through every contract, every document that's set in front of you, to understand what she's giving you. Your official title is going to be Chief Commodity Exchange Assistant. It's a fluff title. You read through it all and you're essentially going to be Vriska Lite, the only difference being that you cannot take legal control of military and security activities. You figure that's Vriska's bread and butter, and she doesn't want you cramping her style, so you let it slide (for now). Besides for that, she does not try to trip you up with legalities. You accept it, sign it all.

Thirty minutes after your debriefing with Vriska, some random Clerk drags you to an outfitter to get measured for two in a half hours. And this isn't the burly, silver fox, bear of a seamster that communicates in grunts and does the staff uniforms and makes you all tingly with the tape measure, this is a beautiful, ethereal troll who you didn't even know _was_ a part of the palace staff. You've hefted yourself up over the class barrier and are exploring a whole new world of bourgeoisie extravagance, including all the overpaid, overdressed, big titted staff that only dirty their hands on the rich. 

This seamstress is a troll covered in tattoos and looks like the kind of woman who eats, sleeps, and shits haute couture. The room you're getting fitted in is decked with velvet chairs and grand mirrors and red satin curtains. It's gaudy as hell.

She doesn't understand Common, so you're forced to actually talk in your newly acquired language. You're determined to not open your mouth until you're fully fluent, but fifteen minutes into her measuring your mostly-nude self you give up on it. You'll probably never see her again, anyway. Literally the first words you ever say in Alternian are, "< _Is my new uniform going to be a gimp suit. You're really going hard at the measurements here._ >"

She doesn't even look at you. She continues measuring your bicep, then twists your forearm up to force it to flex, measures that too. "< _There's no standard uniform for your new position, simply a designated color palette and the latest court dress fashions for different circumstances. You could use your personal outfits if they were appropriate, but apparently they are all, and I quote, 'fugly.'_ >"

"< _I'm flattered. Does this mean you can make everything sleeveless,_ >" you ask, your bad Alternian accent grating against your own ears. "< _And cut off the gloves at the second knuckle._ >"

"< _I'm sorry, sir, I've been specifically instructed to ignore any styling advice from you._ >"

"< _Capital,_ >" you say, dryly.

Once she's done, she makes you a perfectly tailored undershirt in the span of five minutes, casting a complex series of spells to move needles and cut fabric and make stitches so elaborate they rival some of the hardest math problems you solved at academy. You admit, you’re jealous. You wish you could sew like that. At the rate she makes clothes, even discounting any help she has, you figure you'll have a full wardrobe within a week. She has you put the shirt on, then re-does the torso measurements all over again.

You're not entirely sure what you're receiving from this. You glean from her that John gave her some 'guidelines' on your wardrobe, which seems like a trivial thing to advise when he's got way more important shit to do. So you half-expect styles that are silly or embarrassing. Best-case you get something along the lines of what he likes— starched collars and waistcoats and cravats.

You get new living quarters, near the Patrician's foyer. Two floors. First floor has a kitchen, sitting room with a spiral staircase, and an extensive office with wall to wall bookshelves, which you're eager to fill up with books and gadgets and your random kitschy shit. The second floor has a bedroom with a large bed, and a bathroom. The bathroom's got a _big fucking tub._ Yup, worth the blackmail.

He imported your old security system, which is an impressive magical feat. It's still rewired so it goes directly to him. You've got view-only access to it. You lay on your bed and twirl your finger around and watch the blue circuitry light up and wonder if he's listening to you breathe right now. Too much of this privacy invasion is going to drive you insane, but you've thankfully got bigger fish to fry at the moment. There's enough stuff going on to distract you from this issue for at least a week. After that, you'll get to hacking.

You’ll need to hack it a _little_ to make preparations to actually go through with the blackmail if you need to. You can’t see yourself actually going through with your threat, but John doesn’t know that. You need to do _just enough_ to make him aware you’re preparing, while also flaunting you can’t be caught. Might be tricky.

All your stuff gets moved for you. When you go through your inventory, you note your key to his foyer is gone, and some more of your fine and discerning pieces of art, but that's all he took. You still got to keep your swords, which you think is ballsy of him.

Jane visits a couple days after the start of this whole fiasco. You’re standing on your desk and hanging up Dave’s drawings in your Incredibly Serious Adult Office. 

"Okay," she says, storming through the door. She's carrying a brown paper bag and mad as hell. "When you said you got promoted, I didn't think you meant-" she gestures, frustratingly, at the whole room, at the bookshelves, at the plain black shirt you’re wearing. "-whatever the fuck this is!? What is this!? How did- _why_ did- what the fuck-"

You've flabbergasted her into saying no-no words. But you can't tell her that you're blackmailing him. You can't tell her the reasoning. Not only from a moral standpoint of her already shaky image of her cousin breaking into pieces if you tell her he killed his mother, but from the standpoint that he'd probably fucking murder you if you told her. You piece together the best you can do at the moment. You set the poster down on your desk, then hop off it.

"Jane," you say, calmly, and you wave your finger around. Blue circuitry lights up all around you. She stops mid-sentence to stare at John's magic, open-mouthed. "I'm the best person for the job. I earned this."

"I see," she says, shakily. You wave your finger to dismiss the security features. It takes her a moment to choose her words correctly. You're so glad she's not as dense as John. "You'll have to tell me the details later. I just came to… drop off some goodies for you. And… and give you a hug. I think we've both been through a lot."

"We have, haven't we."

She sets the bag of baked goods down on the desk, and then wraps her arms around you. You hug back. Her hair smells sweet, like candy apple. Neither of you let go.

You figure you’ll eventually inform her of the fact you’re blackmailing him, but you can’t tell her here. It probably can’t even be in the palace, you’ll have to have a clandestine meeting with her somewhere in town, where John is less likely to have eyes and ears around. The lack of ability to have conversations with Jane means you’re on your own. She's sent you out into an ocean alone, but at least now you're equipped to sail solo.

When she pulls back from the hug, she squeezes your hands and says, "Do your best, Mr. Strider."

She is not talking about your job performance. You nod, and think of John. "I will."

You get your closet filled in batches over the next week, delivered by troll servants in tyrian pink. Your assumptions about your wardrobe turn out woefully incorrect. You're apparently going to be dressed halfway between a formally outfitted field officer and a sex object.

All black, of course. Detailing in blue or silver. Most of them have John's symbol on the buttons or the border or ostentatiously sewn into the middle of the garment. There's ornate, button up jackets that are cropped high above the waist. Sashes with baubles sewn into them. A wild variety of over-the-shoulder capes and furs, varying from waist length to knee length. Lace up and buckle up military boots ranging from ankle high to knee high to thigh high (you, uh, sort of like the thigh highs). Really tight pants, tight enough for the size of your dick to be on display to everyone who wants to have a measuring contest. You feel half horrified and half intrigued at the possibility of having to wear those all the time, until you find out the front panel of every pair are adjustable. You can wear them looser if you so choose. You do so choose. But you keep a slight hint of dick. Viewable at the right angle or if you sit a certain way.

Then there's the blindfolds. You get six of them. They're all embroidered, unique pieces of art, something you have to sit down on the bed with and hold them out in front of you and spend hours admiring the mastercraft skill that went into them. One has black embroidery on black cloth, so if you catch the light correctly, a mass of dark tentacles will reveal itself to the viewer. One is meant to tie into your ear piercings, to be double threaded and laced through the holes. One is silver with blue Breath motifs, so there's no doubt what master you serve. One is a pair of raven's wings folded gently over your eyes. One is fine silk that wraps all the way around your head, folded like an artfully discarded sash, a poor man’s replacement for bedroom eyes. One is John's crest in subtle dark grays and blues, dead smack in the middle of your face, with the nether appendages symbolic of your Mothers winding themselves around his shield and Breath.

You also get some strange lounging wear. Nothing sleeveless. Loose, dark shirts that expose your shoulders. Velvety robes that go down to your knees. Thin, soft slacks, but this time you can't adjust them to hide the size of your dick. Comfortable but saucy. Real saucy. Thanks, John.

You also get one blindfold that you can’t actually see through, one that ties around your head. You can’t tell if it’s a weird joke or a sex thing. Both? Both.

He did give you one Dirkish touch on every outfit. You note the wrinkles of disgust that crumple the tailor's face when she hands all the pairs of custom-fit fingerless gloves to you. They range from cotton to leather to some decorative metalworked ones, and you nearly weep at their perfection.

You try everything on and pose in the mirror. Most of it makes you look like some Sexy Dark Prince of Abysmal Terror. It's great.

All in all, you already like the lush life more than you thought you would. You like your room. You like the attention. You like the feeling of being cared for, that you're precious enough to truss up and make pretty, screwed as the situation is. You wonder if Vriska got this treatment. If so, you’re glad he didn’t deck you out in catsuits and pirate shit.

You jump right into the Adviser position as soon as you’re able. You sit in on council meetings, start going through old documents and getting up to speed. Your ex-coworkers are _baffled,_ some of them are even brave enough to ask you if you’re fucking him. You don’t think you’re lying when you tell them no. 

You expect John to brush you off, or treat you like a joke. You expect you'll have to win him over and get him to trust you again in the coming weeks. Your assumptions turn out incorrect on the first day, when he bends down to you so you can stand on your toes and lean on his shoulder and whisper sweet nothings in his ear, "That merchant back there is running the kind of shady over-expensive storefront used to cover tax evasion."

"Okay! What should I do about it?"

"I can get a backdoor raiding party together to check."

He pulls away from you and winks, with a trickster grin. "That sounds very shady, Strider. That’s probably something you shouldn’t tell me! I'd totally fire you for that if I could."

You tweak the side of your mouth up by fifteen degrees. "If you could."

You think it's a fluke, but he follows your recommendations and lets you do what-the-fuck-ever the next time, and the next, and the next and the next. He just fucking… bends to you. You find it strange he does so, you thought he'd arrange things so you were destined to fail, but he apparently trusts your decisions despite being pissed at you. In a normal situation, it'd give you an enormous thrill to be pulling the strings on the honest-to-goddess Patrician, but you're mostly concerned with getting the weight off John's shoulders, not creating any more burdens for him.

Not to say you don't enjoy the work. This is a lot like what you were doing in the field: managing resources, deploying people, looking at an inordinate amount of maps… but on a larger scale, with more variables. You love it. You were custom made for this.

You sit at your desk and spend hours of your free time filling out pages of workbook spreadsheets to calculate the best decisions. Numbers are easier to fix than people, equations easier to balance than emotions. Not that you don't account for resources' feelings, but it's so much simpler when they're all abstracted units on paper— 4/10 of these people probably can't do their job correctly so you need to send in more, an average guard might tattle on such-and-such illegal process, you need more volunteer librarians because you can't expect _all_ these insignificant plebs to be passionate about their work, and so on and so forth.

You get to drift between important meetings, often without John, to twist threads and get the outcomes you want. You get to order things that override departments and politicians and councils and the only one who can reject your decisions is the Patrician, who from all appearances isn't paying attention to what you're doing (but you know better than that, at this point). Vriska can theoretically override you too, but you’re staying in your own goddamn lane for now, and barely interact with her in your first two weeks. When you start getting results, when word comes back to you that the machinations you pull are actually _working—_ it's intensely gratifying.

You rarely get to be alone with John. He stops inviting you to dinner, which you expected. But when nobody's looking, he gets a bit… grabby with you. He'll sometimes rest his hand on the meeting of your shoulder and neck, thumb on the edge of your spine. If he whispers to you, it's always unbearably close, like lips on your piercings close. When he gets the chance, he'll lean on you, drape his arms over you, rest his chin on your shoulder and listen to you talk. You think he enjoys your voice, for reasons unbeknownst to you. Your vocal inflection is about as interesting as a piece of burnt toast.

It's nice. Or it would be, if you weren't _fucking blackmailing him._

The first time you're truly alone with him is when you're visiting his office. You've never been in here. It's a carbon copy clone of Jane's, albeit with less books and more meticulously organized old paperwork lining the shelves. You end up sitting on his desk as he absentmindedly signs and seals forms, his wind magic chaotically sending papers and pens flying in front of the two of you, checking boxes and filling in signatures without any real mental input from John.

You're telling him which documents to sign, and what to seal, because you read and memorized all of them. He reaches around your waist. He starts tracing the blue embroidery on your thigh with his finger, and there's a certain point when his thumb dips down along the inner seam where you start getting twitchy. It annoys you that he's interrupting your goddamn job, so you say,

"Hey. Just an innocent inquiry: do you get sexual satisfaction from dressing me up like a designer doll."

All the pens and papers stop midair. With a voice so flat it rivals you at your deadpaniest, he says, "What are you talking about. That would be weird."

"I'm not kinkshaming you; I get it. It's an ownership thing. You want to publicly demonstrate some semblance of power over me after I exhibited control over you. Correct?"

He detaches himself from you. The papers and pens pick back up again, continuing to sign superfluous documents. You turn around to watch him frown. "What? Dude? That's super weird? Um… and don't you have like, stuff to do? Somewhere else?"

"A'ight," you state, deadpan, and hop off the desk. You make your way towards the door, "I'll see you tomorrow, bright and early for tea with the western admiral guy."

You wait for his response before you leave. "Nope, I'm ditching. I think that dude wants to kill me. It'd just complicate things. Vriska’s going with you instead."

That's nice. It'll just be you and Vriska in a race to dead last vis a vis social skills. At least there will be tea.

It's the first time you've had to work with her. She's the visceral opposite of you: you like to take the "silent but deadly" approach, because you know as soon as you open your mouth you become less threatening, but she enjoys loudly terrifying others with bizzare threats. You let her do most of the talking. The admiral is trying to ease forces to combat the Renounced Empire, but Vriska's convinced they're going to attack where he's guarding, and you agree with her choices. Towards the end of the meeting, she makes some budgeting choice you know is economically unsustainable, so you butt in and promise the admiral some other option.

Vriska reaches over and bumps your teacup, which you don’t think anything of. You take a drink from it.

This turns out to be relevant about ten minutes later, when you're alone in the hallway with her post-meeting and the left side of your face begins spasming.

Goddammit.

You stop in your tracks, and so does Vriska. She beams at you. You cough, try to regain some muscle control. Your throat feels like it's closing. "So what is it? Deadly nightshade?" you say, your voice already shaking. "Midnight pearl? Or that one that makes you shit yourself while leaking blood out your ears?"

"< _C'mon, I don't want to spoil the surprise!_ >"

Something fast acting, probably. Your stomach flips, ready to try and expel the poison, but it's far too late for your body to save you. You steady yourself on the wall as your vision blips out, the sensation of falling into a dark pit overtaking your senses, your consciousness stretched through a meat grinder. Great, went right to your brain then.

You come back from it in the blink of an eye. Air isn’t filling your lungs, and one side of your face is acting up, so your voice is choked and slurred. "I didn't think you had the balls to kill me in the fucking hallway."

"< _I don't! I have a bulge, idiot._ >"

Her grin gets wider, victorious. You suddenly have a mission, a goal, a drive to live for another half minute. There is one thing you must do before you die. The most important thing you can possibly accomplish. The thing you were put on this earth for.

You've got to wipe the grin off this bitch’s face.

You lunge for her, getting a death grip on her jacket lapels as she tries to scramble back. She can't get away from you. You lurch your head forward and pointedly avoid your own outfit as you hurl a verifiable bucket of blood all over her stupid, stupid, _stupid_ pirate coat.

"< _Are you fucking serious!?_ >" she shrieks.

"Get bent, Serket," you croak, your vision flickering out like a light.

You allow yourself a moment of happy satisfaction. You then proceed to fall over backwards, hit your head on the floor, and seizure yourself to death in a record twenty seconds.


	24. Friendship is Magic

You wake up to the worst thing you could possibly wake up to.

He freezes. You both blink at each other for an awkward couple seconds. He sets his saws down on the tools table near your feet, stands up straight, and looks somewhere behind your head. "< _Miss Serket, my dear, you didn’t happen to waste one of my resurrection scrolls, did you?_ >"

"< _Did I? Myyyyyyyy baaaaaaaad!_ >" calls Vriska, from far away. You can't turn around and look at her, because your arms and legs are currently tied down to the mortuary table. "< _Guess you'll have to go through with it anyway. See ya!_ >"

You hear the warehouse door slam shut. “Those fancy papers take months to make, I wish they’d stop stealing them willy-nilly,” he whines. “Oh well. It’s always nice when that blue beaut visits. Wonder why she asked about you and I, about our torrid past? Hmm.”

He turns his attention back to you. You're not even afraid, you're just mildly weirded out. You dated this.

"Jake," you say, sounding beleaguered. "What were you planning on doing to me."

"I figured this was a great opportunity to take a peek inside that noggin of yours! You and your otherworldly heritage might have collided to birth some fascinating skeletal features." He beams at you. It’s times like this that relieve you of the worry that you’re into some kind of cyclical rehash selfcest: John and Jake have completely different smiles. Half the time, Jake grins like he’s ready to plunder your goddamn tomb and can’t wait for you to die. "I planned on doing this while you had your toes up to the daises, but I suppose I can be careful and do it while you're still with us in the living!"

Jake used to get squeamish about this kind of stuff. Times change, you guess. You sigh. "No, Jake. That doesn't sound fun."

He pouts. "Now that's quite unfair, pet. You used to find it fun when you were the man holding the knife. I'm reminded of a phrase related to turnabout? Something something fair play?"

"Heavily opinionated, Jake. We fought and I made poor choices related to limb dismemberment in the heat of teenage adrenaline. I don't recall ever strapping you to a table and meticulously dissecting your head."

He's still smiling, but the cheeriness vanishes from his eyes. "You did it with your words, Dirk."

He is one hundred percent correct. He hit you where it hurts. You shut your eyes tight, calm yourself with a couple of deep breaths. Time to face your fear. No better time to do it when you're literally strapped to a table and forced to look it dead in the retina until it pokes your brain out with a scalpel. "Jake. Could you sit down for a hot second. I want to say something to you."

He does so, sitting on the table you're strapped to, his ass bumping your forearm. You can at least lift your head and shoulders off the table a little. You do so, as much as you can, to look at him.

"Jake, I want to apologize," you say, earnestly.

He narrows his eyes. "Are you only saying sorry because I have a lot bonesaws and you can't hightail it?"

"No. Well, yes, sort of, but I promise I'm not apologizing because I think it's going to change the outcome of this bizarre torture fetish extravaganza you have planned for me. Honestly I could give less of a shit about that, minus worrying over the concerning psychological profile you've apparently fit yourself into."

You watch the last sentence fly straight over his head. "Not torture! We’ll have a ball, Strider."

“Alright, sure. Anyway, I want to say I'm sorry for everything I did to you when we were kids. I was an obstinate asshole, and should never have tried to 'fix' you --I'd air quote there if I could, by the by-- and should have accepted you as you were. I know you were going through a lot of shit, hell, we all were, we were teens, but I know I wasn't a help. So, I'm sorry. I’m sorry for how I treated you, I’m sorry for how I made you feel, I’m sorry for everything.”

Jake stares at you, thoughtfully. His lips slowly pull into a closed-mouth smile. “I know, pet. But it is far past the point where ‘sorry’ means anything. I just… well, I just don’t care anymore.”

You don’t say anything. He reaches out, brushes your hair back, combs his fingers through your bangs just once. You let him. He smells like he always did, like the kind of potpourri a grandmother would have. “I bet you’re all torn up inside about it, even though it’s been so long,” he continues, drawing his hand back. “Carrying a burden you never needed to. You always did care an awful lot. But I’ve got an apology of my own: I can’t forgive or condemn you, love. It’s been so very, very long. And I am a different person now. I’m sorry, Dirk.”

You raise an eyebrow. "If you don't forgive me, you can just tell me. I don’t understand what you mean."

"You don’t understand what I mean? I’m saying I’m totally different! I’m no longer the fragile piece of meat I thought I was! I can’t say ‘I forgive you’ for someone else. What kind of person doesn't change after ten blistering years?" He blinks at you, then chuckles. "Oh, yes, sorry. A rhetorical question, pet."

He always knew how to twist a knife, even though his attempts usually sucked. But this one cuts.

He leans over you, eyes exploring your own, something he was too afraid to do when you were dating. “Anyway, I don’t believe it’s worth it to apologize to _me._ I catch some of the rumor mill down here. It’s not much, but… I can gather you’re currently repeating the same old relationship blunders?” he asks you. When you don’t answer, he continues with, “You’re fucking my cousin, right? John’s a bit of a harlot, whoreish to a fault, so I’m sure the romantic attachment isn’t present, but the intent to ‘fix’ him is still there, yes?”

You want to correct him, but you cannot get over the word ‘harlot.’ You are fucking _appalled._ You would never, ever, in one million years, call Rose or Dave or Roxy a whore. Even thinking about it hurts your heart.

"Jake," you say, not trying to mask your horror. “That's your _family.”_

He doesn’t get what you’re so objected to, misinterpreting your words completely. He sounds offended when he says, “Yes, that’s why I’m telling you: John is perfectly fine. Don’t you mess with him, Strider.”

Jake is wrong. John’s sui-fucking-cidal for gods’ sake, but you don’t think Jake understands that. You wonder if Jake’s opinion would be different if he was aware of the problem. You sigh, lay your head back down on the table. You’ve noticed that he isn’t letting you out of your bonds. But he’s not reaching for the opioids or saws, so you think he’s waiting for something. You feel like you’re laid out raw for him, and you owe it to him to tell him what you’re feeling. Turnabout is fair play, as he said.

“No. I won’t mess with him in the same way I messed with you. I’ve changed, Jake,” you say, quietly. “I keep fucking backpedaling on it, but I… I’m trying.”

He tilts his head, daring you to prove it. You think through what you can say to make him believe you’re trying to work on it. Trying to improve, be better, be a bastion of support instead of a manipulative fixer. You decide that the worst thing that can happen is actual vivisection, so why not? Time to be honest.

“Jake, all this cadaver shit is _really weird,”_ you blurt out, yanking your head up to look at him. "But I’m impressed. I am. Like, look at this freaky deaky corpse enterprise you set up for yourself. That's a level of business management and commitment to your passion that, fuck, I didn't think you were capable of in the past. It sure as hell gets my skin crawling, but you subverted my old hat expectations of you."

“Huh?” says Jake, taken aback.

“I _truly_ think you need to get the fuck out of this basement. I think you’re stagnating, and losing your empathy, and you’re too entrenched in your comfort zone,” you continue. “But I don’t think you _want_ to leave. And no one can force you to do something you don’t want. I think if I were in a relationship with you again, it’d drive me up the fucking wall if you were like this 24/7, but honestly, just as a friend where we hang out once every two weeks? Hell no, I’m not going to try to change you. On the contrary, you seem like you’ve become a really fascinating person.”

“Friend?” Jake stutters. “Dirk, we haven’t talked in-”

“No better time like the present,” you insist. You feel manic, the words rolling out of your mouth like fire. Something about being tied up and at the mercy of someone really gets your mind active, apparently. “I want to get to know you again. I want to see who you’ve become. So fuck it. Let’s be friends, English.”

Jake gawks at you, hands in his lap. Without breaking eye contact, mouth gaping like he’s totally zombified by you, he reaches over and unties the ropes around your arms, then your legs. He helps you sit up by yanking on your wrists. He has no idea what to say, and you don’t either. You stare at each other, the silence lapsing into awkward territory.

You’re saved by the sound of the basement warehouse door opening, and John Egbert over-exaggeratedly yelling, “Jake, noooooooo!”

He finds the two of you fairly quickly, considering the size of Jake’s workspace. You suppose he knows the area well at this point. He’s dressed down, but it looks like he dressed down in a hurry, like his waistcoat is three quarters unbuttoned and half his standard rings are still on. He rushes in, heels skidding on the slick warehouse floor, and gapes at the two of you. He is apparently completely shocked you made it out by yourself without getting your skull sawed.

“Oh. Oh, you’re fine? Um, thanks Jake!”

Jake looks unsure of why he’s being thanked when he says, “You’re welcome?”

There’s an awkward beat of silence. John turns to you, scratches his chin. “Hey, can you walk me to Death while we're together? I don't really want to bother my alpha self, he's busy.”

"That's kind of a large effort," you say.

"I can whollop you on the head real hard instead," offers Jake.

"Uhhh, do you have anything quicker acting… and maybe able to be done by surprise so I don't have to sit there reflecting on my mortality for a couple bad minutes?" He laughs nervously. "Not that I do that, or anything."

"Oh, hold on a minute, I'll be right back," says Jake, who hops up, then ducks into the rows of shelving surrounding you.

You stand up, walk to John. You're alone with him. You've got yourself a beta to play with. You should take advantage of this opportunity.

"So, before you blip into oblivion, can I get an honest review of my job performance."

John chuckles. "You're so weird, asking for that. Honestly, I'm kind of surprised you're actually doing your job. I thought you'd half-ass it or something, but you're… uh… maybe better than Vriska at some specific things. Don’t tell her I told you that! But gosh, I swear she thinks economics is a bunk field. Anyway, it's _partly_ why I came down to prevent any inevitable dain bramage.” His expression flatlines. “The other part is, because, you know, you’re fucking black mailing me."

Nice to know. But not the important thing. "Am I making things easier for you? Removing some of the stress you have?"

"I'm not stressed?"

You take a brief moment to facepalm. You decide to come clean. Because why not, right? He's going to die anyway. "Do you understand I'm only forcing you to employ me because I want… I want to give you space to heal."

John frowns. "Heal _what?_ Am I sick or some-"

"I want to allow you room to grow."

"Wow. That's a stupid reason to blackmai-"

"I want you to indulge in some self-introspection."

"I don't have anything to introspect about! I'm fine! I don't-"

"John. I want to see you shine."

"I don’t- I- Oh." He pauses, blinking at you like he's seeing you for the first time. He breathes in, comes to some conclusion you can’t read from his expression.

He reaches down, careful and deliberate, and takes both your hands in his. He squeezes them, then bends, raises your right hand to his lips. He kisses the pad of each of your fingers, butterfly light. Each touch of his lips sends electricity shivering up your arm, warms your chest, makes your heart pound. He curls your hand around his once he's done, and presses one final kiss to your knuckles. The only thing that saves you from outright swooning into his arms and apologizing for what a horrible person you’ve been is the fact that he might decide to be the alpha John if you do so.

"You didn't need to be an ass and blackmail me. You're not going to get… whatever results you want," he says, gently, lowering your hands to waist level. "I don't have any burdens for you to take. You should have just kept doing what you were going to be doing, like, getting me out of bed when I’m feeling lazy. Anyway, you think my mind is all weighted and conflicted and stuff, but it's not. I'm not stressed, or angry, or sad, or scared. I'm just… I'm just like this! I'm just right as rain."

You feel sick. You _know_ he's wrong, you've watched him act out every fucking one of those emotions, often in extreme ways. He's also literally fucking told you he feels those things sometimes, so _what the fuck,_ does he just suppress all of it _that much?_ He's dug himself into an infinite trench of denial. He's got to pull himself out. You've got to hold your arms out for him.

But it’s just like Jake. How do you help someone grow without forcing them to accept it. He needs a wake up call, but you don't know how to give him that without hurting him.

John's eyes flicker wide, a moment of clarity. "Should I really be the beta John? You're worth remembering, and I-"

A shot is fired. A bullet punches itself straight through his head, exiting his left eye and spattering blood, brains, and white goo all over your face. The spray is as warm as his hands holding yours. You don't have to deal with the grotesque sensation for long; his body flickers into nothingness, along with the gore left on you. You wipe your face with your sleeve anyway, to try and remove the crawly feeling left on your cheeks.

Jake is standing at the end of the room, one eye closed, smoking flintlock pistol still aimed at where John was. He seems happy, proud of the shot he fired.

"Dammit, Jake," you grumble.

Jake lowers the pistol and performs some post-shot maintenance on it. "He wanted it to be a surprise, pet. Did I interrupt something?"

You don't answer.

You stare at Jake, and you think of how he and John are so similar, who believe they're "just like this" when they're capable of so much more. You think of how Jake spends his time stagnating with the dead. You think of how he just murdered his beloved cousin point blank without hesitation. You think of how Jake doesn't think he needs help, just like John.

It's a choice you can't force them to make.

But… maybe you can give them encouragement, in your own way. Give them reasons to want to get better. You swallow every nerve down, every "logical" thought in your head screaming at you that this is the wrong choice, that you’re only forcing him to be your friend, that you’re going to abuse the shit out of him again and fuck him up even more. You make a promise to yourself to never talk to him again if he rejects your offer, which is what finally allows you to speak.

"Hey, Jake?"

"Hmm?"

You take a deep breath. "Would you like to… would you like to hang out with me next week? We can get coffee or something. Or I can show off my newly acquired cooking skills, if you want. Let's catch up."

He draws his head back, stunned you brought up the friendship thing again, and you watch him mentally weigh the effort of going out but meeting someone who was dear to him vs. staying inside in his comfortable introverted hovel and continuing to talk only to those who can't respond.

In the end, he smiles, relaxed, and says, "That sounds nice, Dirk. But I prefer tea."

You tweak your mouth up a bit. "You're right. I've forgotten. Tea, then."

You make a plan to meet him on the weekend. You don't trust him not to duck out if you meet somewhere public, so you promise to meet him directly in the basement and decide where to go from there.

The feeling of closure sates you.

*********

You seek out Vriska the next morning. After talking to three different clerks about her possible location, you find her at a quiet round study table in the small law library, near a window that faces the rising sun. She's reading a book that on first glance looks like a war tactics guide, but on closer inspection turns out to be roleplaying manual. She’s drinking red wine. For breakfast. You sit down next to her, loudly. She glances up, bored.

"< _So are the vivisection scars underneath your blindfold?_ >"

"No, they're internal."

"< _I can't tell if you mean emotional scars or if he took your kidney._ >"

"And you'll never find out, either."

"< _So what's the deal,_ >" she says, shutting her book. "< _Come to enact your revenge?_ >"

"I think we're even until the next time one of us tries to fuck the other over," you state. "But no, I'm here to inform you of why I'm actually doing this job. I think it will prevent the need to… throw me at the mercy of my ex-boyfriend’s strange vices.”

She raises an eyebrow, grins, plants her elbows on the table, settles her chin between her palms, and says, “< _Do tell, Strider._ >”

“It’s not to get power, or to plant a mole close to John who can report back to Jane so she can ‘usurp him-’” You air quote here. “-which she is absolutely not doing, by the way…”

She grins wider, says nothing. You continue. “Instead, I’m here for John. And you, in a way.”

She drops her persona of mockery, points an accusing finger at you. “< _You trying to auspice us or something?_ >”

“While I am intrigued by that quadrant and will 100% act on it in the distant future… no. He needs you as you are right now.” It’s your turn to lean forward, and while you don’t mirror her stupid double-hand-on-chin pose, you do prop your head up against your artfully poised fingertips. “You told me a while back that I should be his matesprit. And while I'm not… quite what the quadrants designated, I at least understand the sentiment. < _Vriska, I want you to know that I am not here to undermine you, or seize power. I am here to help John, and I am here to help you. We want the exact same thing._ >”

She blinks at you, eyes rapidly scanning your face for something. You give her some time. She appears to tentatively believe you: she draws her head back, narrows her eyes, and sneers. “< _Are you asking me to be *nice* to you, Strider?_ >”

“Oh fuck no, this murderous competitive intrigue shit is hella choice.”

She exhales, relieved, wipes an imaginary band of sweat from her forehead. She points at her wine glass. “< _Uh… Want any?_ >”

“Bit early for wine.” 

“< _No, bitch! It’s grape juice. Only losers drink booze alone!_ >”

That is the funniest fucking thing you’ve ever heard. “Well in that case, load me up.”

From under the table, she pulls out a wine glass and a clear jug of juice, uncaps the cork, and pours you a tall one. “< _Kind of a wraparound way to help a beau. Blackmailing? Seriously?_ >”

She slides the glass over to you, and you take it, swirl it around and smell it. Yup, definitely grape juice. “Fine aromas, notes of chocolate, vintage purple,” you say. “But, yes, I’m aware of that. To be fair, I think you would have perma-killed me if I didn’t secure my position somehow.”

“< _Maybe,_ >” she hums, then raises her glass for a toast. “< _To a reasonable level of animosity?_ >”

You raise it to match. “Reasonable as balls.”

The grape juice, surprisingly, turns out to be completely normal. The glass isn’t poisoned either. You’d consider this a win.

*********

Roxy’s laying on your office floor, face up, crossing her legs and eating carrots out of one of your bowls. She’s wearing one of her casual outfits: a moon and stars covered dress that’s appropriately wizard themed. You’re sitting at your desk and trying desperately to get some work done, but your cousin’s not having it.

“So, DStri. Baby. I know that you’ve got a real sweet setup here, like I am totes impressed, but uh, I gotta say I’m a bit concerned.”

You had to be pretty crafty with how you’ve presented your Adviser promotion to Roxy. You didn’t want to go the same route as with Jane, since you don’t want to cause any strife between John and Roxy before the heir is born. You tried to tell her that you were good at this kind of shit so he hired you straight up, but she didn’t believe you. You settled on ‘Honestly… I just got this job because I’m fucking him.’ She gave you a congratulatory pat on the back and asked ‘Is that why he’s dressing you like some kinda sex freak’ and you said ‘I always dress like some kind of sex freak’ and she said ‘Fair.’

“Why?” you ask, disinterested.

“I dunno, ‘cuz you’re at the top of the food chain, I guess,” she says, and her voice actually quivers. You tear yourself away from the documents you’re reading to look at her. She’s frowning, her expression caked in worry. “And like… if something bad happens… Won’t you be one of the first targets?”

“I think I’m more than equipped to take care of myself.”

She frowns even deeper. She sticks a carrot in the side of her mouth like a cigar. “What if it’s something really bad though. I don’t want you to get hurt just ‘cuz you got a sweet ass job; you’re my fam.”

“Something bad is always happening, Rox’.” You frown at her. “What’s got you so worried?”

She chews on the carrot. “Nothin’, it’s the baby hormones talkin’, probs. I just care about you a lot.”

This is the first time that _anyone,_ John or Roxy or privy third party, has mentioned the pregnancy situation to you. You’re more equipped to handle it now than you were two to three months ago, considering all the comparatively worse shit that’s gone down in your life since then. The concept of your current love fucking your cousin exactly one time, before you really had the chance to make intimate contact with him, isn’t so bad anymore.

Still, your throat feels dry when you ask, “How’s that going. Anything changed yet.”

“Not really. I recently got taken off all the guard shifts. Which is kind of dumb,” she says, her casual tone returning. “All that’s changed with my hot bod is that my hair got really nice and I’m maybe three inches fatter and I’m hurling like, every other goddamn second. Is that a sign of somefin? Like my kid’s gonna be a necromancer if I upchuck at stupid often intervals? Healers say no, but I’m going to go to some janky fortune tellers and see what they predict.”

She swallows the final bit of her carrot. “Anywhale, I’m getting a cool room once we’re sure everything’s going to go fine and that the kid’s in it to win it. It’s defs gonna be better than yours!”

“I don’t doubt that.”

“I need a new job though, I’m bored as hell not doing the secret police shit, but I guess I need some desk work for a while,” she says. “Any ideas?”

You suggest a couple things, but she calls them ‘booooorrriiinngg’ and refuses to investigate. You give her some woeful sighs in reply. You don’t mind all that much when she decides to raid your pantry and stick around for the rest of the afternoon.

*********

You’re on a roll with the ‘talking to people’ and ‘expressing your feelings’ and ‘using friendship as a path to healing’ thing, so you decide to try it on the person who matters most to you right now. 

You spend a couple days figuring out how to talk with John about being friends with you again. You can barely get him to hold a full conversation with you. Trying to approach it in the way you did with the John in Jake’s workspace elicits a dismissive response from him, instead of the encouraging one you got with the beta. You can’t just… apologize, or anything, but you’ve got to get him to open up to you again somehow. You go through your options and decide you only have one straight shot: dude still wants to fuck you. It is very clear he wants to fuck you. He probably wants to fuck you over his desk, with your clothes still on, and order you to do kinky-ass depraved sex things. You’re _so down for it._

But you’re actually after the pillow talk, the post-sex vulnerability where you can start to broach the topic of being friends again. You figure you’ll talk about how much you care for him, maybe say something similar to what you told the beta John. You know there’s a rocky path ahead of you, but you have to try anyway.

You manage to corner him during his so-called ‘office hours,’ which due to how you’ve had to reschedule your beloved bathtimes, you’ve learned that he actually does have them. You arrive just at the end of the designated time slot, in case he wants to lock the door and do unspeakable horrors to you. He’s sitting in the chair behind his desk, his feet kicked up over the flat of it, reading some document with that ‘I’m bored as hell but am forced to do this’ furrowed-brow look on his face. You shut the office door, march up to him, and sit on his desk, next to his legs. He blinks at you, tosses the document over his shoulder, and takes his feet off the desk. He leans forward, blinking up at you, grinning.

“Ye-es?” he says, trying to hide how excited he is that you gave him a distraction.

“I want you to lock the door and do unspeakable horrors to me.”

He frowns at you like you just said that in some unfathomable Eldritch tongue. “… Sexy horrors?”

“Sexy horrors.”

“Why would I want to bone someone who is black mailing me,” he says, totally deadpan and flatlined. “That would be really dumb of me.”

“Yeah, but said blackmailer is totally down for weird sex shit. You just gotta pick one,” you say. “So far on the Egbert fetish list I've got: oral fixation, high-octane situations, ownership kink, and an 80% chance of being into extreme asphyxiation, as gleaned that one incident with Vriska.”

"It's not _that_ extreme, I just get distracted sometimes," he says, pouty. "Nothing wrong with a little light headedness. It's fun."

"Want to try it out? I promise I won't try to murder you. Pinky swear, kissed and sealed."

"Sure!" he giggles, then spreads his fingers towards you.

Your breath is stolen from you, mid-inhale. You gape, your hands darting for your throat as an automatic reaction. Your lungs struggle uselessly, to pull in any amount of oxygen. John starts laughing, uproariously. "Oh, my bad, Strider. Did you think _I_ wanted to be choked? It's like, boner city for me right now. Better hope I don’t get distracted!"

You've got about ten seconds worth of air, your vision already starting to go dark around the edges. His laughter subsides to giggles. "I'm just messing with you. Turning the tables and all. We have definitely not taken a detour to boner town."

He ceases giggling, lowers his hand, and says with a neutral tone, "But seriously. What do you want from me?"

He lets you struggle to breathe for another two seconds, your vision nearly going out, your heart hammering louder than anything, before ceasing the spell. You gasp, uncoordinated, on the edge of hyperventilating. He places his hand against your chest to steady you, so you don’t fall forward. “I’m not-” you cough, inhale again, force yourself to get it back together. “I’m not sure what you mean.”

He drops his hand when you straighten yourself up. He folds his arms, then gives a charming, canned laugh. “If you think I'm stupid enough to believe that your sultry, swaying hips don't come with strings attached, then you really have no idea how many times in my life people have just… thrown themselves at me! I'm not going to fall for this old trick when I've literally grown up with it. So, I'm going to ask one more time. What's your angle?"

Your heart is pounding from his spell, you can’t get the words together easily. You say, dumbly, “I don’t have an angle.”

He rolls his eyes. “Suuuuuuuure. I mean, I guess I expected you to try to use your body to get me to approve something or miss some meeting or whatever at some point, but I didn't think you'd be such a whore about it! It's only been a few weeks."

“Wow, uh,” you say, completely floored by the conclusion he jumped to. Although, even though you’re not after political gain, you guess he’s right about what you’re doing. You just want to use sex as a means to an end. “Goddess forbid I find you… attractive, or something.”

He grins, but it’s just a mask. “I’m not in the mood, anyway.”

He pats you on the shoulder, as a consolation, then stands up. You let him leave. As soon as he shuts the door, you fall back, lay down on his desk. Stare up at the fine oak ceiling, carved with long square panels.

That didn’t work. But doesn’t Vriska do the shit he was accusing you of? Using sex as a vehicle to get something she wants? 

You wonder how she does it.


	25. Pear Shaped

< _You just have to distract him so he doesn’t think about his morals! You have to be wearing something tight so it makes your butt look awesome. And have your tits out. V-necks and sweetheart cuts are the best,_ >" says Vriska, pointing at her chest. "< _And then give a shimmy-shake. Like this!_ >"

They wiggle. It's distressing, like a hypnotist’s pendulum. You're very glad you're having this conversation in an empty council room. "This is incredible. I can't tell if you're fucking with me."

"< _Why would I be fucking with you!? These are quality seduction tips from the seduction master!_ >" She grins at you.

You sigh. "Thanks for the… quality advice, but I think the circumstances between you and I are too different to be mutually applicable."

She shrugs. "< _Suit yourself. Oh, hey, while you're here, I've got some work to pawn off on you. Thanks for being kind enough to be slightly lower than me on the food chain!_ >"

"My pleasure."

She grins, poorly, and you grin back, poorly. She proceeds to dig in her cleavage for something, and pulls out a small, black envelope. She hands it to you. The envelope is uncomfortably warm. It’s an invitation to some sort of party. You recognize the family that's hosting it: one of the banker groups trying to get a monopoly on the city. "< _It's basically only humans invited, which means it's going to be a total bore. You guys are sticklers when it comes to socially acceptable murder/assassination._ >"

"Not all of us."

"< _Well, you don't count. You're *barely* human. You've got the skinsuit, but you don't got the guts,_ >" she says, still grinning. She's right. "< _Anyway, it's all about… shit tier party gossip that's beneath my level. I've got better things to do that night. There's going to be a throwdown with the Renounced Empire in the Alternian plainscape I want to be available for. So consider this your big social debut! Your job is to tell John what rich debutantes are best to have cutesy little chats with, make friends with randos so you know who's-who, and be arm candy._ >"

"I'm very good at that last item. Not sure about the rest."

"< _Oh come on, have faith in yourself,_ >" says Vriska, giving you a manic look, like she can't wait to see you fail. "< _They'll loooooooove you._ >"

It's held at some vista, at the edges of the human side of the city, where the nobility has room to groom their extensive gardens. The party's got a dank ass gothic death-of-winter theme. You and John get sweet matching outfits. Outfits that were pulled from some budget you _still_ haven’t seen, seriously, you have to figure out who the hell is laundering money from where to give you ostentatious sexy clothes.

You travel to the party with John, in a coach. Fifteen minute ride, the coachwoman tells you. It's a small coach, fully carpeted and wallpapered with a gilded ceiling, and has two little windows and plush benches facing each other. It's big enough to fit four tight-knit people. Or in this case, big enough to fit you, John, and John's legs, which he's manspreading out around your own in a ridiculous slouchy position.

Due to the wardrobe precautions you were forced to pursue, you get the novelty of leaning back and crossing your legs tight. This is in contrast to sitting like an uber masculine slob, as per Dirk Strider usual. The two of you end up in a contrived tangle of lower limbs, with you hooking one of your unusually elegant looking ankles around the back of his thigh, and him squeezing you with his knees like he's trying to press you for juice.

You wanted to use this opportunity to talk about some Deep Emotional Stuff. But two seconds into the coach ride and John has his eyes trained on your crotch. Guess it's another conversation about your dicks, then. Not that you mind. You fuckin’ love talkin’ ‘bout cocks.

"Where'd your dick go?" he asks, pointing at your pelvis like you wouldn't know where to find the damn thing.

"These pants are essentially tights, and I didn't feel like showing off a pinpoint accurate charcoal rubbed outline of my junk," you tell him. “There’s a codpiece insert to make it more-or-less flat, and I tucked everything away besides.”

You shift your legs in order to knock on your crotch. It makes a hollow wooden noise.

"Um. Okay," he says, mildly freaked out. "You really do look nice though."

"Thanks," you say, a bit surprised. "You too. That outfit must weigh fifty pounds. Is this how you put on bulk. By requesting clothing so heavy it's a workout just wearing it.”

He shrugs. "Nope. I just wear whatever they give me. I've got a Cool Personal Brand for day-to-day stuff, but I don't care about parties. They are a whole different beast, so I just let Ms. Maryam go nuts on the haute couture when there's a big occasion coming up."

You get really distracted and try to quiz him on where the hell the money for this stuff comes from, and he does his normal deflect-dodge-joke routine until you glean he legitimately has no idea and probably doesn’t want to know. And oops, there goes the rest of the coach ride. You’ve got to start asking Jane these questions instead.

You’re dropped off at the garden foyer. The party’s outdoors, although people are meandering in and out of the whitewashed brick mansion to warm up or get snacks. Humans in elaborate cold weather costume drink heated cocktails while lounging in soft couches arranged around torches and firepits. A massive spread of dead branches, painted black and with ornate lanterns hanging from them, cover the large garden complex for decorative effect. Guards, tough hired mercenary types, drift amongst the crowd with their hands on their swords.

It’s probably the last snow of the season, as winter is well on its way into spring. Earlier the snow was wet and sleet-like, but it’s calmed into small flakes as the sun went down. John waves his finger, you feel a brief chill crackle down your spine, and not a single snowflake lands on you for the rest of the night.

You think you’d be a socially anxious wreck if you didn’t look so goddamn dope. It’s easy to hide behind your appearance when you’ve got this fly of an outfit. John takes you by the hand, places his palm against the dip of your neck and shoulders, and shows you off to the world.

Wherever he brings you, people _shut the fuck up and listen._ He introduces you to a couple important city figures, some Questant Heroic Types, etc etc. After cycling through a few groups, you figure you’ll be a social liability if you stick around John too much, so you abandon him (while still keeping him in view) and drift between the people who interest you. Whether for personal or political reasons.

You don’t talk much, preferring to let your conversational partners glean everything off your mysterious masked appearance as opposed to whatever bullshit your dumb brain decides to spout. Being silent is easier than you expected. Ultra rich politico types just love to talk your ear off. 

Hilariously, you find out pretty quickly that everyone fucking loves Vriska. They keep asking about her, why she isn't here, she's just "so fun." You'll have to tell her that, she'll be tickled. 

You quickly learn you are… not as fun as she is at parties. You can at least open a champagne bottle with a saber, which impresses like thirty people. That's kind of cool, right? Right?

Your job turns out not to be what Vriska described. You don’t need to direct him, as he tends to be socializing with the right people about the right things. Instead, you turn out to be more like a weird party cockblocker, where you pull him away if he’s spending too long with one particular group or person. The topic of the day is the impressive storm killing trick he pulled last month, because apparently he’s been avoiding this particular crowd until now. He’s eating up the attention, spinning people miles of yarn with the intricacies of casting heavy duty weather magic. You are left out of the story. It doesn’t make his tales any less exciting, judging by the enraptured faces even the most stodgy of politicians wear when listening to him.

You forget that you’re not the only person who loves John. Well, no one loves him like you do, obviously, but there’s a hell of a lot of people out there who would jump in front of a pointy trident for him. The dude’s just been skyrocketing in popularity with both the common people and the cake eating rich, with all his sacrifice and sweetness and the care he shows. He’s also smart (or l8cky) enough to make himself _just scarce enough_ to be a wanted commodity. John doesn’t show up to just any old social event, you know for a fact.

He’s also touchy with people. Friendly touches. Touching shoulders, hands, jawlines, occasionally the base of the neck. You get a hell of a lot of entertainment out of watching the victim of his physical contact either break into nervous sweats, get flustered, or pretend that this is all _totally fine._ While he’s always looming and invading others’ personal space, this behavior is rarer for him. You think he’s compensating for the lack of his normal black robes. The cloth usually does the touching for him. 

You get the same treatment, during the in-betweens when you’re pulling him away from a crowd. And you up the ante on the sexual tension between you and him, for shits and giggles. Turn the tables and start doing that sexy whisper thing to him, although he has less piercings to play with than you. You stand a little too close, when you have to talk to him, rest your hand on his arm as you stand on your tip toes to murmur some scandalous party detail to him.

As the night drags on, John drifts off further and further into the dead gardens, and you don’t always pull him back to the party proper right away. You get it. He can’t keep up the pinpoint-focused charm the whole time. You always give him a couple minutes, then drag him back when people start noticing his absence. 

It’s in the dying hurrahs of the party, when everyone still outside is an annoying level of drunk and two pompous money barons are passed out in the empty fountain, that you let him stay alone. You hunt for him after about fifteen minutes of watching a tall thin woman try to flirt with her reflection in a decorative mirror (high class entertainment). You find him completely alone, behind a tall hedge maze. It’s probably a sight to behold in summer, but without its leaves it just looks like a gnarled death trap.

He’s leaning against a marble balcony, at very edge of the property, looking out onto hilly fields. It’s all edge-of-the-city farmland, lots of small unlit shacks with stone dividers, nearly imperceptible in the night. The snow still falls in soft flakes, vanishing into nothing mere millimeters away from your skin. You lean on the railing next to him.

“Hey,” you say.

“Hey,” he says, not looking at you. He doesn’t say anything else, and you don’t broach the quiet. His face is flat, lost in thought.

He's holding a cut, narrow cigar. It's probably more of a cigarillo, although you're not up to snuff on your tobacco length so you're not sure where the line is drawn. They had them near the buffet. You were way too straightedge to take one. He’s turning it over and over between his fingers.

"Roxy told me she went to a couple sketchy fortune tellers," he eventually mutters. "They all said it's going to be twins. Two baby girls. Roxy's so happy, but… and don't tell her this, please, but I'm hoping it's not true. What if I won't be able to tell them apart? Or what if I pick a favorite and I won't know I'm doing it? But more than that, I…"

He pauses, staring off into the distance. He stops fiddling with the cigar. You do not interrupt his train of thought.

"My mom was a twin. Kind of funny, huh?" he continues, his expression a flat line. "But I'm not laughing."

You dig your fingers into your bicep to stop yourself from saying anything. You don't know your place anymore, whether to comfort him or make a joke or not. You decide to change the subject.

"Why'd you grab a cigar."

"I don't know. I hate these things," he says. "They make my mouth sore for like, eight hours. My dad used to smoke them a lot."

He plucks it up, looks at you with eyes that don't mask the sadness all that well. "Light it for me?"

You nod, flick your pointer finger out against your thumb, let a hint of your flaccid cantrip magic course through you, and allow a small flame to flicker to life above your fingertip. He reaches out and grabs your wrist, way too tight, like he wants to drag you off somewhere without your consent. He forces your hand up near your face, although it's far enough away from your sweet coif that you don't fear singing yourself.

He pops the cigar in his mouth, holds it between his forefinger and his middle, the one with the gaudy blue ring on it. He bends down to you to light it. You half-expect him to immediately start wheezing, but he breathes it in fine. You suppose he wouldn’t choke, since he's some kind of airway savant.

His vision is angled low, under the edge of his glasses, so you see how his dark eyelashes flutter and curl. He turns the cigar, breathes out quick tufts of smoke to get it started. Smells good, like warm fireplaces, reminds you of a library. His eyes flicker up, he lets go of your wrist, and you extinguish the flame and drop your hand. He stays close, staring at you, like he’s trying to read your thoughts.

He takes a long draw, the round of the cigar lighting with a ring of orange, then pulls it away with a slow flick of his wrist. You think he's going to be an asshole and blow it in your face. Instead, he parts his lips, gently. White smoke pools upwards out of his mouth like tendrils. It curves up along his glasses, leaving traces of steam, then vanishes into clear winter air. Treads the line perfectly between seduction and douchebaggery. You raise an eyebrow, even though he can't see it.

"Are you drunk."

"No! Okay, a little," he says, completely losing any seriousness he had. He stands up, looks a bit sheepish. "Check this out, though."

He takes a much less elegant draw this time, then proceeds to purse his lips and blow out a tuft of smoke, which forms into the shape of a small rabbit. The transparent bunny wafts towards you, then animates, standing up on its hind legs. It darts around your shoulders, nuzzles your cheek with a breezy, dry hotness before vanishing into the air.

"Cute," you say, trying to sound ironic.

John runs his tongue along the roof of his mouth. "It kind of hurts to do that."

"Well then, no shit cigars make your mouth sore."

He narrows his eyes. "There's a metaphor in here, somewhere. Cigars, sweet tricks, mouth hurts…"

"It means you like sucking dick, John," you say. "You like big, juicy cock."

"< _Or big, juicy bulges,_ >" he says, his Alternian accent seadweller-smooth. He waggles his eyebrows, waiting for your reaction, but you don't give him one. He sighs, takes another draw. "Whatever. Symbolism is for nerds.”

He leans against the railing, and you wait with him. He occasionally presses his cigar to the marble to get rid of the excess ash, which you find mildly inconsiderate, but what the fuck is this party’s host going to do to the goddamned Patrician for leaving ash on her balcony? Nothing, that’s what.

You’re roused from your zoned-out stupor by another smoke rabbit. It wafts in front of you, curled up and comfy. It blinks its milky white eyes at you, its whispy whiskers twitching in spiral puffs of smoke, and boops you on the nose with its own. You bite down a smile. It dissipates, and you turn to John. He’s giving you a fond look. “Did you have fun at the party?” he asks.

You shrug. “If you’re asking that question, does it mean it’s time to go home?”

He grinds the last nub of the cigar into the railing, to put it out. He leaves it there. “I dunno, usually at this point everyone is sloppy wasted or banging each other in broom closets.”

“Neither of us are sloppy wasted. So.”

“Want to hump like teenagers?” he says, waggling his eyebrows obnoxiously. He holds up both his hands, towards you. “Or play a sword fighting game? My hands are big and can hold two whole dicks!”

You think he’s just fucking with you, so you return the favor. “I’d agree, but my junk is fused to my taint, put away for the night and tucked into bed with a soft sheet of excess scrotum flesh.” 

“… That is officially the worst thing that has ever come out of your mouth,” says John, who is now slightly more pallid. He recovers quickly, gives you a look up and down, deciding what to do with you. “But maybe I can convince you! Let me show you how to seduce someone the _right_ way.”

He drops to his knees, careful to get his median 20 capes out of the way, and hugs you around the waist. The feel of his fingers splayed against your lower back makes it hard to suppress your shivers. He’s kneeling super straight, so his chin is level with your chest. The fifty pounds of fabric spreads around you in pools of black and royal purple. He makes doe eyes at you. You rest your arms on his shoulders.

"I've been looking at you all night, I can't stop. I swear you have some kind of mind control powder baked into your skin," he says, in a tone that sounds earnest. "You're so pretty, Strider."

You're not some half-baked twink, so you don't get called 'pretty' a lot. If someone bothers to complement you it's usually more along the lines of 'hot' or 'you're… weirdly swole.' "I don't think that word means what you think it means."

"You _are_ pretty! It's not just me. People have been staring at you all night."

"Yeah, because they want to check out the Patrician's new toy."

John giggles, looking a bit guilty. He slides his hands up along your back, dipping them under the hem of your jacket. You feel yourself drawn in, weakening, who the fuck cares if he's messing with you, you want his touch. "If you were my toy, you'd let me play with you, right?"

You want to see what he does, if he's jealous, so you say, "Not necessarily. I could go off and play with some other men who've been looking my way."

"Funny joke," he says, his face coloring a slight pink. “But I should bring you to parties more often. I like seeing who wants you. It’s fun because they can’t have you… You’re mine.”

There’s a pause where you just… look at each other. Then John snort-laughs. “That was some shitty porn dialog.”

You hiss at him. “At least my lines were better than, fucking, ‘hey bitch, be my sexy sex doll that I bring to parties and diddle in the back room.’”

“I did _not_ say that!”

“You said it with your eyes.”

“What am I saying with my eyes _now!?_ ” He proceeds to make this incomprehensible expression. Somewhere between pouty sex face and trying to identify a faraway object in the distance.

You sigh. “That you want me to suck your dick on the coach ride home, sir.” 

John detaches himself from you, winks, finger pistols, and makes a clicking noise with his tongue. “And this is why I pay you to think for me.”

Once you actually get in the coach, you realize sucking his dick will be pretty fucking hard. It’s too cramped with the both of you in it. You don’t think you can fit in the space between the two plush benches, not on your knees at least. The coach starts to move, cobblestones clacking underneath with bumpy, swinging motions. John pats his lap.

“Fifteen minute ride,” he hums.

“Fifteen minutes, huh,” you repeat.

“Fifteen minutes,” he confirms. He’s grinning, blue eyes glinting in the city light, daring you to move.

You stare at him. He stares at you. You eye up his jawline, the patch of skin exposed at his collar. You hear your own pulse, lick your lower lip, feel the heat and need and lust start to build in your thighs. He reaches to the window, draws the curtains shut. Then repeats the same thing on the other side. Only the vaguest hint of city ambiance comes through the thin fabric, lines of light skimming over his face and body as the coach travels along.

You think you're showing admirable restraint by not tackling him through the goddamn wall. You half-stand, to try and move onto his lap. He catches you with his knees, swivels on his ass, and you're forced to shift with him. You end up planting both knees on his bench. He props his feet up behind you, rests his back against the opposite wall, and you hang out between his legs. The position you end up in looks like you're about to ram him in the ass in classic missionary, which, fuck yeah. You're almost deranged enough to ignore the impracticality of it. With a little self-belief and a lot of spit, you can accomplish _anything._

You have to perform an elaborate tap dance to get your dick unfused from unspeakable crotchal areas, so you start on that immediately. You unhook all the clasps down the center line of your jacket by ripping the damn thing open in one smooth pluck. John shoves a knuckle into his mouth, bites down on his glove, and watches you like he wants to tear the rest of your clothes off with his teeth.

You undo the now accessible buttons along the side of your waist and hip, fold down the front panel as it comes loose. John squirms beneath you. The curtain shaped light of the city meanders across him. The coach rocks the both of you closer with every crooked cobblestone.

"Hurry up," he whines, pressing an insistent palm to the exposed skin of your abdomen. The hot feel of the leather sends a shiver up your spine. "I want you."

"Do you?" you say, reaching down to, fucking, dig your goddamn dick out. It’s sort of a race to tug it out before you get hard in a really uncomfortable position.

He seems to recall at this point that he also has an outfit on, and proceeds to rip his belt off, yank open his tunic, pull open his fly, and whip out his dick well before you. You manage to wrangle everything into position as he does so, sliding your pants down just enough to get the goods free. There’s something visceral about finally getting it all exposed. You feel hot and throbbing between your legs and you've got an incessant need to grind it out of you. You're so aroused you can count the beats of your pulse through your own fucking junk. You're in heat and need to breed.

"Come here, I- Please-" John mutters, tugging on your jacket. You lean down to him, expecting to kiss him, but he turns his head away at the last second. You get this knot in your throat at that, a sort of passionate sorrow.

You instead press your lips to his jawline, gentle like a goodnight kiss. He doesn't react. You've got too much of a hormonal buzz going to let it cripple you. You move your mask up to the top of your head for the exclusive purpose of being able to nuzzle past his billion cloaks and shove your face against the slope of his neck and shoulders. He smells like tobacco.

He tears his glove off with his teeth, throws it to the floor. His rings clatter against the carpet. He spits into his palm and proceeds to slather it all over your junk, then repeats the same thing with himself. When he’s got a good grip on you both, you start to move.

You grind against him, hard, focusing on the slick feel of you sliding through his hand. John is clutching at the back of your jacket, and the shaky breaths he takes in time with your thrusting is almost as hot as the actual act of frotting. As you go at it, you listen to the noise of the city outside, the street passing you by, night owls conversing with words you can’t hear. The time constraint gets you heated, and the brazenness of fucking in a coach, and John, _John._ It’s been so very long.

John makes this strangled, choking noise when he speaks, like it's an effort to think of the words, "Strider, your piercings…"

"Good?" you breathe into his collarbone.

You feel him swallow. "Really good."

The asymmetric tug of your vertical barbell against his shaft feels wonderful for you too. The opposite end of it catches on his fingers when you pull your hips back, sending a wave of electricity all through your body. You put some gusto into your thrusts. You’ve been desperate for him. You’re so happy he’s being intimate with you, even though for him, it’s probably nothing but the physical. It’s fine with you, you like being objectified. Really. The thought’s alluringly filthy to you, that you’re just a toy…

“I’m close-” you pant, not wanting to stain his outfit. “-I need- Let me up-”

He lets go of you to slide his undershirt further up, giving you a whole runway of bare abdomen _clear for fucking landing._ Hell yeah. You force your hips to continue grinding as you get shaky with orgasm, power through the fireworks as you spill out over him, hyper aware of where his skin touches yours. You thrust out the aftershocks, until you’re drained and sloppy. You tiredly pull yourself up, to brace yourself over him. He’s looking at you with such want, his face red with a sex flush, visible even in the dark.

You want to curl up with him and sleep, but your Mothers didn’t raise a quitter. You're about to contort yourself into some strange and unknown position in order to suck his cock, but he puts his free hand on your chest to stop you. "Just watch," he says, out of breath.

You nod. You don't know what he's getting out of this, going to town while you silently judge from above, but whatever. Maybe he's got a voyeurism thing.

He takes a moment to let go of his own cock, slide his hand up his abdomen to wipe up everything, then licks his fingers clean of you. He's looks as blissed out as you feel when eating one of his meals. Which is, like, what. You're bamboozled by his… oral thing. You know for an objective fact you tend to not taste very good. Whatever floats his boat, you guess.

He starts jerking off proper when he's done, staring up at you with that same fond-lustful look you've really come to love. You've got a clear head after expelling your Masculyyne Enyrjjies, so you pay academic attention to how he gets himself off. Heavy pressure on the line of muscle down the underside, full strokes so his palm goes over the head, slides all the way down so the skin is taut and pink. Similar to how you do it, although he finagles his fingers in a way where he can push against that outward curve.

He's watching you, blue eyes clouded over, teeth gritted. Again, you don't know what you have to offer vis a vis jerkin' it, but as you have that thought you become aware of yourself biting your lip, digging your hands into the seat cushion. Perhaps your subconscious reactions are more attractive then you think.

"How are you so- so-" he stammers, shaking. He loses his train of thought, instead choosing to run his free hand down your stomach, pushing on your hips to angle your barely-there erection all nice and pretty towards him. "I- nnn- I want more, I want your mouth and your cute legs and I want your dumb jokes in my bed, I want-"

He tenses, back arching, gasping, boots digging into the wall of the coach, and you're ducking down and bending yourself in half to swallow him because fuck no you're not tempting the stain gods again. That'd just be embarrassing. 

His cock tenses in your mouth. You get it finagled against the inside of your cheek so it doesn't trigger your woefully unprepared gag reflex. He tastes strangely neutral, at least in comparison to the exotic bouquet of spunk you've swallowed in the past. It's still strongly acidic, but the bitter aftertaste you’re more or less used to is absent. Healthy diet. There’s a lot of it though. Dude’s virile.

You let him rest, his free hand petting your hair with soft strokes, then draw your tongue up his shaft and head as you pull back, watching him shake with overstimulation. You press a gentle parting kiss to his cock, which is sort of stupid but makes him chuckle. You blink up at him. He blinks at you.

His lips are parted. He is relaxed, boneless, and so unguarded he's not even smiling. He presses his glove to your cheek. His voice is thick as caramel. “Gods. I love your eyes.”

You bite your lip. And you'd love to take advantage of him, to slip up between his arms and let him hold you, but you've got a time limit. "How close are we?"

He snaps to attention, then shifts to peek behind the curtain. "Oh, ha ha, shit," he laughs. "Pretty close."

You scramble off him, adjust your mask, wrangle your dick so it's not bulging all over the place, and manage to get everything buttoned back up. John's outfit is much easier to pull back together, so he watches you as he finds his discarded rings, entertained as all hell as you re-dress.

The coach comes to a halt as you get the last clasp on your jacket together. "It smells like sex."

He shrugs. "Not that much. Besides, I've been caught doing weirder things."

The unassuming dude who helps you out of the coach doesn't make a face or notice anything, and John gives him an encouraging pat on the shoulder. John offers you his arm, which you take, and he escorts you into the palace. Through the formal entrance.

A maid shepherds the both of you into a dressing room to get the brunt of your outfits off, with John needing far more help than you. While you wait for him to get stripped down to the base tunic and slacks combo, you duck behind a screen and take the time to tuck your junk properly. Even though you’re going to get in pajamas right away and conk out, you think there’s no way you’re not going to walk by some judgy ass palace staff on your way back to your room. 

He walks with you, although you suppose you’re heading the same direction. He keeps his hand on your lower back, like he doesn’t want to stop touching you, but you don’t want him to stop either. When it comes time for the two of you to part, he hesitates. Stops in his tracks in the hallway. You turn to face him.

You’d love for him to invite you to come to bed with him. You don’t want to have sex with him again, you just want to talk. You want to hold him. You want to… you want a lot of things from him.

He stares at you, biting his lip, his eyes flickering all over your face. You wait him out. He reaches out, as though to touch your cheek, but changes his mind at the last second. In a voice that is much less confident than his usual tone, he murmurs, “… Good night, Strider.”

You let him leave, and don't follow.

*********

It hangs on you, for the next couple days. The tension between you and John is harder and denser than cold butter, but you don’t know what to do about it. You navigate your job in a zoned out stupor, which is probably why you don't hear Roxy coming.

You’re walking to some council meeting or another when Roxy tears around the corner, bawling. She’s running at you at full speed, no blindfold, black void streaming from the holes in her head. You see her body is wracked with sobs when she skids to a halt in front of you. She sounds like she’s hyperventilating, snot is dripping down her chin, void pours down her cheeks and dribbles onto her chest. Her face is scrunched up, her outfit a mess, like she just threw something on haphazardly.

The heartache that wracks you is unbearable. You reach out for her, to touch her shoulders, to look her in the eyes. It has to be something earth shattering. World shaking. 

Your first thought is that Dave and Rose died. Your second thought is that she miscarried.

“Roxy,” you say, horrified. “Did you… did something go wrong with… Did you lose…?”

“No! No, my babies are fine! It’s just-!” She clutches onto your shoulders, manically, and you hold her tight. You’re afraid she’s going to collapse from hysteria or some shit. "Dirk, please, sweetheart, you gotta get out of here, you gotta run! But… But I know you're not going to! You're so brave, and I wish you weren't! I- I know you'd die for a whole lot of people, baby, but please run, please, as a favor to me. I don't want anybody to hurt you!"

"Roxy," you say, completely confused. "What’s happening?"

“I thought it’d be later! Way later, I thought it’d wait until after the kiddies were born, but no, it’s gotta happen < _right now_ > apparently! But now I don’t know! I don’t know what I want to do! I’m in too deep to turn back but I- but I love all of you, not just you and Rose and Dave but all you humans, I didn’t think I would but I-! I’m going to hurt everyone no matter what I do!”

You raise your voice, despite yourself. “Roxy, what are you talking about?”

She manages to take a deep, watery breath. To calm herself. She backs away from you a couple steps, and you let her leave your arms. She stands up straight, her fists clenched at her sides.

"Dirk, sweetie, I gotta tell you something," sobs Roxy, her head tilted towards the floor. "… I'm so, so sorry Dirk. I've been lying to everybody. Even you. And it’s too late for you to do anything."

Tears ooze from the lower edge of her holes, trickle down her chest in great, inky streams, puddle beneath her feet. Apparently it's so bad that she needs to immediately run after she tells you. You wait for her.

"I've got a girlfriend," she chokes out. Anticlimactic. You immediately calm down. But she's got that tone in her voice that says she couldn't stop crying, even if she wanted to.

"Alright, congrats? Not what I expected there. Why the tears?" you say, staring at the growing portal beneath her feet. "Is this just a weird pregnancy hormone thing."

"No, wait, I said that wrong, Common is hard sometimes. Puns, man," she sobs, and starts to sink into the portal. You watch her drop. At the last moment, before her head dips into her Void, she says, "I've got a girl _frond._ "

You lunge for her. The portal closes before you can yank her out by the hair. Your fingers smack against solid ground. You sit, on your knees, staring at the floor. You sag down, every piece of your soul crumbling, until your forehead touches the cold stone.

Girlfrond. _Girlfrond._ She never broke up with Meenah. _She never broke up with Meenah._ She's been in cahoots with the Renounced Empire since day fucking one. You thought she… You thought she was better than that. You thought she grew in the arms of her family and friends.

You try to think through it. You try to sort out the implications. You try to draw the obvious lines from A to B to C. But you cannot hear your thoughts over the sound of your heart shattering.

You only know one thing. You know you have to get up. 

‘Too late for you to do anything’ echos in your head as you sprint down the hallway, towards John.


	26. Lifdoff

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so much for all the good comments, guys ;_; I just……… I love all of them……………………… so much……………… and everything you guys have made, too, I just feel so blessed at all the support.

John is so pokerfaced after you finish recounting what happened that you’re concerned he got hit by a petrification spell. His hands, nearly hidden by his cloak shifting around him, are clenched over some loose fabric. You’re certain his knuckles are transparent white underneath the gloves.

He’s standing behind the desk in his office. You’re standing in front of it. Vriska is idly flipping through some binder shoved in the bookcase to your right. John’s face grows paler and paler. You’re not sure what to do. Vriska shoves the papers back in their place and swivels towards the both of you.

“HAAAAAAAAA! Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha HAAAAAAAAA!” Vriska bellows, crouching and pointing at John, her mouth open in a wide smile. “Them’s the fucking breaks! < _All this time you thought you were seducing her, but it turned out to be the other way around!_ >”

That’s what does it. John tenses like a cat furring up and snaps back to life. “Uh,” he says, mildly panicked. “Anyway, well, good news is that she sounds pretty choked up about stabbing us all in the back. Which, I dunno, maybe that means Meenah or someone is blackmailing her?”

He sits down in the chair, runs a hand through his bangs, and sighs. “But… what kind of person would go along with blackmail if all these stakes are so high? That just doesn’t seem like Roxy to me.”

He lets his head fall to the desk, with a soft thunk. He sighs. “It’s all my fault. I knew she was sneaking away but I trusted her… She kept disappearing at random and I didn’t send anybody after her to look… Okay, well, I did, like, once, but it’s kind of hard to track a teleporting void princess.”

“Whatever,” says Vriska. “Who cares! < _You’ve got, what, at least eight sweeps before you have to freak out about two buck toothed assholes trying to oust you for dominance._ >”

“I don’t think that’s true,” you say. “I think Meenah’s going to destroy both you and the Auctor as soon as possible, since she has all these forces handy. Roxy’s just a tool for a more longterm solution.”

John lifts his head up to sigh woefully at you.

It’s all starting to come together for you. The Renounced Empire’s been building up a military presence to try and assassinate the Auctor, and once she’s gone, all resistance crumbles due to Alternia’s blood-based dependence on rulership. The problem lies in the close ties with human territory, because John isn’t going to want to make compromises with a brutal, Condesce-like leader.

So, easy solution: kill him. Jane would be next in line, and while you could see her trying to take a business-like egalitarian attitude towards the whole scenario, she wouldn't be the roll-over-and-pet-my-stomach leader they'd want. So they'd probably kill her too. That'd put Jake on the throne, and... yeah, he'd do a bang up job of being a short-term puppet ruler until the children were old enough.

It's startlingly good for a long-term takeover plan. Presuming they have a clever way to placate the royal staff and the people in the empire, you think the only thing that could fuck up their heir-related plans is if there were another child. But considering John's got his genitals on lockdown vis a vis the heir thing, you're pretty sure Jane hasn’t had a date for five years, the things Jake fucks don't get pregnant, and Jade is in presumable monogamy with a troll, a bonus child is ineffably unlikely.

You’re midway through telling John and Vriska all this when one of the Auctor's guard arrives. She's a teal blooded troll, thin horns that curl up like corkscrews, wearing heavy black leather armor lined with pink. She enters the office without knocking, shuts the door behind her, and bows, deeply, to John.

"< _Your Tyrannical Majesty,_ >" she addresses.

He waves. "< _Hi! What's up?_ >"

She stands, proper, one hand on her chest. "< _Reporting that a small squadron of five of the Renounced Empire's ships are working their way north along the river, towards Porkmor-kahn. Current position is fifteen nautical miles from Alternian township Black Orchard. Vantas and the Renounced Empress are reported to be on the flagship. We're scheduling an ambush once they hit Black Orchard, heavy losses are expected. Along the Blade Coast, to our west, a fuller fleet appears to be preparing an attack on the city, but the Auctor feels she has the seaside situation taken care of._ >"

John's brow furrows. "< _Tell Fef’ to wait on that, okay? I'll send someone over to her in a few._ >"

As soon as the guard leaves, he stares at the door, frowning, "How long is a nautical mi-"

You and Vriska answer at the same time. "It's basically a mile." "< _It's basically a mile._ >"

He stifles a laugh. "Okay guys. Uh, guess we know where Roxy went. Anyway, I'd rather not have Feferi's dudes get perma-killed for no reason, so let's think of something better then a hasty ambush! Can't we get another armada down the river to distract Kankri? What about Ampora's?"

"He's in the north sea right now," you state, remembering the charts in the war room. "I'm betting the Auctor has them utilized for the seaside battle."

"< _Let's open it up into a full fledged war, use our own forces!_ >" says Vriska, excitedly. She makes a swooning pose. "< _It’s easy! 'Oh noooooooo, The Renounced Empire kidnapped the Patrican's wife-to-be.' and then all the humans will fall for it and be like 'yeaaaaaaaah! Kill 'em!' because who doesn't love a good tragic romance?_ >"

John scratches his chin. "I don't want to lie like that, though. Especially since we're not getting married. On top of that, I don't want all my people to die for no reason if Kankri's involved."

You watch a lightbulb go off over John's head. With a bright grin, he launches into his idea. "Why don't I drop by alone and just… take Kankri out? That's really all I have to do. Meenah and the rest of her battalion can be taken out by Feferi's forces. That way, nobody has to get perma-killed."

John is essentially a one man army, but the thought of him going against a squadron alone, with a magic-immune bio weapon on board, makes you queasy. How many of him will have to die? "What if she's got a trick up her sleeve. She wants to kill you, remember? She has your heirs in the palm of her hand," you say. "She captures you and tortures you, for instance. Or you fail, and Kankri blows you into smithereens."

He shrugs. "It's not going to be a real me anyway, so who cares? The real me will be at the palace, and I'll just keep sending out other mes and _they'll_ keep making other mes until I have enough mes to successfully kick Kankri's ass. Then I'll let Feferi take care of the rest!"

Vriska also looks uncomfortable with this idea, tapping her foot, irritated. "< _Let's flood the river instead. Drown them all. Nice, easy, hands off. We can use the charms on the palace bridge to amplify the water castings._ >"

That would flood a hell of a lot of farmland, and perhaps the lower levels of Porkmor-khan, depending on how close to the palace the spell originates. But, selfishly, you don't tell them that. You'd rather the river flood the city then send John out there alone. You're very greedy.

"That can be the backup plan!" chirps John, who is apparently dead set on staking out by himself. "Oh, I need a sweet outfit, one that hides my hands!"

"I'm going with you," you blurt out.

He and Vriska snap their heads to glare at you. John looks confused, Vriska looks offended she didn't say it first.

"I am not sending you out there alone," you clarify.

John bites his lip. "I mean, I really do appreciate your offer, but it's kind of dumb and self-sacrificial! I've basically got infinite lives and you only have one! I don't think I could…" His gaze goes shell-shock blank, eyes hollowing out. "If I lost you… Either of you… And it was all my fault… I don’t know how I could get through another day."

The admission of his weakness travels down your throat, knots up your voice so you cannot say another word. So you do something desperate. Something you rarely do to anyone. You hug him of your own volition.

You move around the desk, lean over, wrap your arms tight around his own, and press your face into his shoulder. His cloak envelops your legs instantly. It takes a second, but John returns the embrace, folding his arms around your back. You breathe him in. You wish you could do more. So much more. 

Wait. You guess there _is_ something else you can do.

"Vriska," you spit out, turning your head to look at her through the waves of black fabric. You make an insistent come hither gesture at her.

She rolls her eyes, but follows your instructions anyway. "This is so lame," she grumbles, as you shift so John can extend an arm towards her. "You're both so lame."

He pulls the two of you into a tight grip, angling himself so Vriska doesn't spear him in the eye with one of her horns. You get his left shoulder and Vriska gets his right. You and Vriska finagle your respective hugs so you don't have to touch each other. John is gripping your back like he wants to absorb your body into his own, and you bet he's doing the same to Vriska.

"I guess it's a boon if Strider comes along," she says, thinking through her Common carefully. "Since he's a liability on Meenah's side, right? She's not gonna want to hurt one of her girlfrond's precious human pets, not if she doesn't want Roxy to turn on her."

"And you're going to need a necromancer anyway, for Kankri," you say. "He's probably being controlled as a corpse, so Serket's gotta pick up the slack once we kill his puppeteer."

The reasoning isn't as strong as it could be, but it's better than nothing. John holds the both of you, for a long time. You listen to him breathe, calm and collected.

"… Okay," John sighs. "Okay. Let's do this."

*********

John splits himself into three right off the bat.

Two stay in the palace, one will go with you and Vriska after being outfitted with a “cool battle mage getup.” You also get an outfit made for battle. All black, even black on the buttons and buckles that hold everything together. Since your fighting skill is entirely dependent on speed, it's mostly cloth. The leather bits consist of knee high boots, breastplate and small pauldrons. You also have a light cloak that doesn't get in your way, that snaps off if it gets caught on anything. Most of what you're wearing is magically imbued to resist whatever gets thrown at it-- excluding, of course, the Vantas brood’s abilities. This cost a pretty penny, and you're not sure it's worth it.

Vriska gets tasked with telling some of the human higher-ups what's going on, in case something goes wrong. You have the task of informing those close to the Patrician and letting it trickle down without initiating a city-wide panic. You head to Jane first, who takes this in with a grave seriousness that John and Vriska didn't have. It's refreshing.

"If John is killed," she says, solemnly. "I will make myself very scarce until I am sure I can defeat Meenah."

"I can't imagine how the hell he'd manage to die, but good idea," you say.

The Auctor is next. She’s in the war room, surrounded by maps and Alternian generals in the blues and purples, twelve of her most elite guards lining the room. It’s a world of politics totally alien to you. She shuts everybody up when you arrive.

"Hey there, soulwalker!" says the Auctor, showing off her teeth. "Come to share what John's got up his sleeve?"

You tell her what’s up, from the Roxy situation to John’s plan. She takes a moment to thank you for accompanying John, but bemoans that you couldn’t stop him from going ahead with it, “Espeshelly because it’s my succession crisis, not his!” She tells you her ambush team will move north, ready to attack in case something goes wrong.

You also stop by to tell Jake. It's an afterthought, it doesn’t occur to you to do so until you’re on your way back to John and Vriska. He should probably know, right? 

You find him in his basement, as per usual. He's actually reading a book instead of doing anything mortuary, and he insists on thanking you for treating him to a nice teatime last week before you're able to tell him what's going on, and what you hypothesize would happen to him if Meenah managed to succeed at slaughtering both John and Jane.

He blinks at you, in disbelief, before giggling. "Oh, Dirk. I wouldn't just roll over and take it! What kind of yellow-bellied slug do you think I am?"

You want to argue with him, but new year new you, you guess. "What would you do?"

You asked it expecting a hypothetical, something he wouldn't actually do but thinks he would, like, 'fight them tooth and nail while managing a kickass underground resistance.' You forget he's changed.

He grins at you, warmly. "I'd _publicly_ slaughter myself the moment I was set on that accursed throne."

It's the emphasis on 'publicly' that gets to you. Your voice is a little shaky when you say, “Bit selfish. Forcing Jade to take the title?”

One side of his mouth pulls up, and his eyes shine with the same cunning that John gets when he’s about to pull off a political trick. “She would take it with a storm and a fury and use the resources at her fingertips much better than I. She’d eviscerate and stuff every ass licker who dared to lay a finger on us.”

He’s got a point. Jade’s hardcore.

He thanks you for telling him, and you dip out, to meet up with John and Vriska on the outdoor edge of the palace, directly in the middle of the river.

It's springtime now, the river flowing with a rapid, bubbling current that roars. The kind of current that could pull you under in a flash, the kind that sends ships soaring over waters at swift speeds. You lean over the railing of the great bridge that holds you, watching it all flow by. Vriska and the beta, probably-sacrificial John stand next to you: John with a non-magical, heavy iron hammer strapped to his back, Vriska belted up with hidden knives and swords and daggers. You have your Unbreakable Katana and a spare with you as well.

There is not a thread of blue on John's outfit. It's all Patrician-black, from his boots to his trousers to his spaulders. It's a battle dress, floor length, with two hip-high slits cut all the way down the legs. Over that is a breastplate that ends just under his pectorals, sewn into intimidatingly tight leather armor that hugs his waist like a corset. The long hood, which he has off, flits and sways in the wind, its tail playing tricks on the eyes and extending and retracting in a smooth, dark, smoky line. Most importantly, he has long, draping sleeves that are cut a little tighter than his Patrician's cloak, so his hands can remain hidden for stealthy spellcasting.

Vriska's wearing some black thief lookin' outfit you don't give a shit about. Nobody's going to even throw a glance at either of you with John's Shadow Master Of The Nether Reaches look going on. Seriously, the one downside to John's outfit is that you can't see his ass because of the dress.

He smiles at the both of you, before waving his hands. Shitty magic sparkles fly everywhere, and your feet lift off the ground. There is a massive gust of wind from behind you, and the three of you go toppling over the bridge. You choke down a scream at the feel of gravity turning in your stomach. The wind picks up, and you all launch forward, following the river.

You feel like you're getting rammed by an out of control horse at a near constant rate. The speed is insane, the countryside and mountains and river flying by, blowing your hair and cloak back. Vriska's sitting crosslegged on nothing, already bored, letting the wind carry her. John's tilted horizontal, looking like he's actually fucking flying. You decide to imitate Vriska's pose, because you can't figure out how to turn yourself with a metric ton of wind pushing you in the back.

As you fly, the sunny afternoon slowly clouds over, then rumbles with quiet thunder. A small spark of lighting, like you're running your hands along a static filled blanket in the dark, pulses down John's spine on occasion. 

His face never changes, still a soft smile, still focused eyes.


	27. GEEETTTTTTT DUNKED ON!!

John summons a field of lighting to encircle the three of you like a shield once the five ships come into view. This turns out to be a stellar idea when you’re close enough to be greeted by a generous hail of arrows, all of which are electrified into ash by John’s barrier. He sights the flagship— a junk rig with sails folded like fans, and begins to fly the three of you towards the deck.

“Wait! Wait!” shouts Vriska. “Don’t bother getting close, dumbass! Just rain hell on them from back here!”

“What if Roxy’s on the ship!?” John yells back, over the wind and the noise of the roaring river. “I don’t want to hurt her if there’s a chance she turns around! We’ll just go down and investigate and _then_ I’ll rain hell!”

Vriska facepalms. “< _Ugh, hope you like dying! Idiot._ >”

“I agree with John,” you say, also not wanting to hurt your cousin. “But you should duplicate yourself while you’re up here.”

He does so, flashing into white nothingness for a moment before popping back into existence in the same space. Behind you, another John hovers in place, spreading his arms up towards the sky. The dark cloud mass crackles with lightning, like it’s mere minutes from unleashing a violent weather rampage of hail and thunder. You leave that John behind, the three of you soaring closer and closer towards the flagship.

The deck of the junk comes into view, under three black battened sails pumped full of wind magic. Meenah and Kankri stand on the dark, moistened wood, near the rail in the middle of the ship. There’s a small crew of eleven: six on the raised upper deck, four on the lower deck, a troll in the crow's nest. Most of them have crossbows. Roxy’s not there.

John sets you all down in front of Meenah and Kankri. You land straight into a fighting stance. The shield of lightning crackles as it engulfs the wood floor. John’s outfit ebbs and flows in the roaring river wind, his black hood flickers like smoke. His posture is at its most formal; a towering, straightbacked leader ready to vanquish.

They’re waiting for you.

The assumption that both you and Vriska made turns out to be wrong: Kankri is very much alive, and _not_ being controlled by a necromancer. He’s infamously stubborn and abrasive, so you wonder what the fuck Meenah’s doing to convince him to be on her side. That’s bad news bears if he’s willingly working with her.

You draw your Unbreakable Katana, watching for any hint of Kankri’s biomancy. He seems pretty content with sipping his… you think that’s hot cocoa. You catch the whiff of chocolate over the fishy smell of the ship.

"< _Whaddup, beaches!_ >" hollers Meenah. She stands up fully, planting her hands on her hips. "< _Ready to get clobber-_ >”

John jerks his arms out, and the barrier of electricity goes cascading across the entire deck in a solid wall of white light, knocking the crew to the ground as it passes. It incites seizures in some, lighting coursing up their bodies as they convulse on the floor. Meenah ducks behind Kankri. When the lightning touches him, it vanishes completely, leaving a Kankri-sized hole in the magic. Kankri takes another sip of his hot chocolate. The lightning dissipates into small sparks, then nothing, once it overtakes the deck of the ship.

Apparently the magic was enough to kill a couple of the crew, because Vriska’s eyes flash with her blue, she spreads her fingers out in front of her, and four soul-bound troll corpses on the lower deck stand up and ready their crossbows.

“< _Rude!_ >” says Meenah, stepping out from behind her body shield. “< _I thought we were gonna shoot the shit, fam. Well, waterever, come on, kick our asses! I dare ya!_ >”

You don’t like her taunt, it sounds like a trap. John frowns, just for a second, before deciding not to waste the opportunity. He flickers white, then pops into non-existence. There’s a longer beat than usual, then about _thirty_ Johns reappear, in various places on and above the ship. Kankri sets his cocoa down on the railing.

There are about ten or so Johns within easy range of Kankri, the other twenty hovering above the sails and masts. You decide that this is going to be over in mere seconds, and even with your speedy in-and-out fantasy!ninja quickness, you’re not going to bother getting in the line of John’s fire. You stay put, sword gripped in a fighting stance. 

Kankri spreads his arms out as the closest Johns to him brandish their hammers. His face is calm, meditative. Neon red lights up the pads of his fingertips, and five of the Johns to his left explode.

You’ve never really seen what Kankri can do; just heard the rumors and whispers and tall tales of one of the two scarlet living-gods, and the only biomancer birthed in millennia. Conceptually, you understood that he possesses the power to permanently kill anybody with just a movement of his hands. But it doesn’t really hit you until you watch John implode into a puff of ash, like someone just threw a fistful of flour into the air. His hammers crash to the deck, clothes flutter down until all the leftovers vanish into white. 

For the first time in your entire fucking life, you are brought to the heart palpating realization that death is a _very real consequence._ This isn’t the slow process of corrupting or ruining or aging your body enough to make it irresurectable, the uncertainty of ‘if I die in the river am I actually going to die because my corpse rots away, or is someone going to find me on shore.’ It’s not the death that you’re used to. This is _real._

Kankri uses his opposite hand to gesture towards one of the Johns above you. Red sparks crackle along that John, similar to necromancy. John’s eyes alight with red, and he lets his hammer fall into the river. He raises his arms to call upon the building storm above, presumably to use it against himself, but is stopped when a John nearby wallops him into the water like playing whack-a-mole. Judging by the loud crack of the hammer against skull, you won’t be seeing the biomanced John again.

Meenah looks on, bemused. But even with the power of gods at his fingertips, Kankri is not nearly fast or strategic enough, and the remaining Johns rush him at a speed rivaling teleportation. 

Vriska swings her arm down, and her controlled corpses fire four crossbow bolts at Kankri. One of the Johns accidentally zooms in the way of the range of fire, and dies when the ammunition hits his chest and waist. That John evaporates into nothingness, the bolts trapped in him clatter to the deck. The roar of river and battle is punctured by the sound of a palm smacking against a forehead.

The John closest to Kankri swings his hammer. When it’s a hair away from Kankri, a mere fraction of an inch from severing his head from his body through sheer force, Meenah starts to laugh.

An impossibly black tendril lashes up from the ocean and impales John through the chest. There’s a beat, John freezing in place, hammer so very close to reaching its target. Black void drips from his torso, pools from his gaping mouth, and he vanishes into white.

You know that blackness, that void. You’ve seen that tendril before. You’ve seen it when you walked John to Death, when the Lord killed his soul.

Hundreds more dark appendages lash from the masts, from behind the sails, from the wood, to impale John through the chest and kill the clones in flashbangs of white. John realizes that he’s fucked pretty quickly, and starts phasing into more and more of himself, each clone duplicating over and over, on repeat.

Vriska aims her necromanced trolls towards Kankri, blue crackling over their bows, all of them loading to fire. He flicks his pointer finger at her. Neon red sparks force her to snap her arms to her sides, cut off her necromancy. The dead trolls flop to the ground, unbound.

The tendrils burst out of air and ship and water like wicked vines, overtaking the deck in a fog of black, a mass of overgrowth. It feels like your “tears” as they engulf you, heavy liquid pressing against your face and arms and chest. The moment is brief, for once they've completed their task, they all retract into some other dimension with a loud, wet noise.

John is dragged down to the deck in front of you by the last straggler tentacle, his body slamming into the wood with the force of it. He screams in frustration. Every muscle on him pops with the effort of struggle as the vines tug his wrists, arms, hands, and waist down to the floor. Even now, he tries again to phase into more of himself, about twenty, vanishing from his spot in front of you. The appendages emerge from nowhere, killing all of them in moments. He keeps trying to clone, the force keeps catching and culling them midair before he can move anywhere. The last John is finally pulled to the wooden floor, fully bound with black around the waist and arms. He is bent forward, on his knees, his teeth gritted, sweat dripping down his temples, and his glasses askew. 

The last John flickers white.

“Wait. Wait!” he sputters, horrified, staring at himself. “Wait, how’s that possible!? What’d you do to me!? What did you do- < _What did you do to me!? Oh, no no no, don’t tell me the sea based attack actually-_ >”

"< _Nah, they ain’t there yet. I just made a deal with Death,_ >" says Meenah. She picks her teeth with her pinky. "< _Usually you gotta bargain away your soul or sacrifice a bunch of grubs or some hot garbage, but the Lord glubbin' hates you. Kinda hard for you to win when there’s a god on my side._ >"

The clones back at the palace are dead. Killed by a literal deal with Death. If this John dies, it’s game fucking over. That’s it. You lose. 

It’s a hard mental battle, but you make a strategic move to _not_ rush Kankri in a passionate rage. You’re not going to make it if you do, and you don’t want to be locked up like Vriska if you’re needed for something important. The thing that gives you hope is that John, sweaty and bruised and pissed as hell, hasn’t given up. The slight shift of his fingers, hidden by dark cloth and bound behind his back, indicates he’s prepping a spell.

“< _You’ve only got one life left, buddy. Whatcha gonna do with it?_ >”

Kankri raises both his hands up, red biomancy swarming over his fingers, and starts to ‘repair’ the living crew. Sparks travel up their bodies, and one by one, they stand up, back to full health. The storm rumbles above you. Lightning crackles across John’s glasses. He flicks his eyes to you. 

You fling your Unbreakable Katana down, slicing through the tendrils, and the dark bonds snap like you’re cutting through licorice. Kankri twitches his middle finger, and you go flying to the left, slamming into the upper deck stairs and knocking the wind out of you. 

John bursts free. Lightning shimmers all through him as he tries to raise his left arm up to the sky, to call upon the storm waiting for his command. Kankri jerks his thumb up. There’s a popping noise from underneath John's sleeve, like a balloon exploded.

John just… stops. You're not entirely sure what happened, and John's gaze is as confused as you feel. 

John’s left sleeve flutters. His empty, bloody glove falls to the deck with a wet splat, and his rings clatter against the wood shortly after. John blinks, his lip raising into a scowl. He uses his right arm to bat at his sleeve, but it sinks through the fabric. There's no skin or bone or muscle there anymore.

"Holy shit," he says, wide eyed. Blood soaks through the cloth, a rain of red patters to the floor. "Holy shit?"

You hear a heavy metal spring release. A crossbow bolt crashes through his left lens, glass shattering everywhere, and embeds itself in his eye socket. Blood and tears and chunks of sclera splatter from the wound. His mouth opens in a silent scream, his other eye rolling back into his head, and he topples forward. 

His body crashes to the deck. Your subconscious tells you to cry out, but you stifle it when you note that you’re _still_ not under the control of Kankri, unlike Vriska. She’s trapped on the opposite end of the deck, red biomancy crackling all over her, her eyes narrowed and flicking everywhere, the look she gets when she’s planning. If John didn’t give up, and if Vriska isn't giving up, neither are you. You need to figure out what to do— apparently Kankri doesn’t consider you dangerous enough to keep you biomanced or outright kill you. You can use that to your advantage. You slowly begin to work your way up to a standing position, careful to be non-threatening.

Meenah gestures angrily towards the upper deck, where the bolt came from. “< _Which one of you fuckos krilled him!? I don’t want him dead yet!_ >”

“< _He’s still alive,_ >” says Kankri, shutting his eyes to sense for the living.

“< _Great! Can you fix him up a bit? Not too much, though._ >”

Kankri nods. In time with Kankri’s hand motions, like Kankri is controlling the strings of a puppet, John sits up on his knees. His one remaining arm moves towards his socket, hand fumbling around his leftover eyelashes. John draws out the bolt like a pin from a cushion. Red sparkles along the bloody leftovers, down his shoulder until the apparent endpoint of his forced amputation above the elbow, and finally shimmers around his head for a few seconds. Blood stops trickling from his arm, from the hole in his head.

John takes a deep breath, waking up. His remaining eye flickers open, expression flatlined. He doesn’t say anything. You don’t know how aware he is. His empty sleeve flits against his torso in the wind.

He is not bound by the Lord any longer, but Kankri’s still got a hand trained on him. Occasionally, red sparks will flicker all over John’s body, a demonstration of control.

Vriska looks like she’s going to explode. Her cheeks are bright blue, her teeth digging into her lower lip so hard her chin’s turning white. She struggles against bonds she cannot possibly break, arms rigid at her sides.

“< _Aw, let her talk, Kankri,_ >” says Meenah, nudging Kankri in the ribs. “< _She’s probably got some funny shit to say._ >”

Kankri waves his hand.

“< _I TOLD you FUCKHEADS to STAY ABOVE THE SHIP!_ >” screams Vriska, angrier than you’ve ever seen her, at you and John. “< _You two are MORONS! OH MY GOD!_ >”

You stay straightfaced. John doesn’t move his head to look at her. He’s barely blinking, his wounded left eye isn’t even capable of shutting. It’s this sad, droopy, irisless half-moon of white.

“< _Ha ha, tru,_ >” says Meenah. “< _Anywhale, at least now you get to stick around and hear my cool plans? They’re glubbin’ rad._ >”

“< _Thank the fucking Lord that SOMEONE’S got a GOOD PLAN,_ >” bellows Vriska, in Meenah’s direction. “< _LAY IT OUT FOR ME, BEACH! I can’t wait to hear this one!!!!!!!! Hell, if it’s good enough, I might even join you! I’m eight seconds from betrayal RIGHT NOW! Convince me, please, I’m begging you! ANYTHING to get me away from these FUCKING LOSERS with their DUMB FUCKING PLANS!_ >”

“< _Shore! We got lotsa time until my matesprit comes back,_ >” says Meenah, grinning. Well, at least before you perma-die, you’ll get to see Roxy again. And guilt the hell out of her. Meenah points at John, mockingly. “< _So, first off, good honey trap, huh? I wanted you to come out here, ya little selfless martyr, you. You’ve got quite the reputation you know. Although I didn’t expect you to bring… uh… baggage. How’d you know we weren’t gonna krill ‘em._ >”

John still isn’t moving. Vriska looks like she’s on the edge of her seat, manically interested in Meenah’s story to spite the two of you. You’re fully standing now. Next order of business: getting your sword up to your hip.

“< _Shell, I guess Strider was an obvious one. Can’t cull ya ‘cuz of the girlfrond,_ >” says Meenah, shrugging. “< _But Vriska? I just don’t wanna krill ya ‘cuz I glubbin' love Serkets. Just the whole brood. Buncha wildcard crazy OP necromancers._ >”

Vriska winks and writhes her forcibly stick-straight body around in a poor attempt to make a flirty pose. "< _You're damn right!_ >"

“< _But *you,* the only reason I’m keeping you alive is…_ >” Meenah grins, then in heavily accented Common, says, “I want you to watch your moirail die.”

John finally moves, revealing he’s not brain dead. He grits his teeth, hunches his shoulders forward, and folds his eyebrows down.

“< _Poetic! I love it!_ >” says Vriska, who has this crazy-eye look going on. 

“< _Ain’t it, tho?_ >”

“Kankri,” rasps John, with a voice that sounds like burnt toast. “< _Why are you doing this? She’s no good, she just hurts people…_ >”

Kankri picks up his cocoa from the railing of the ship. He takes a sip of it, then grimaces. Presumably, it tastes like river water. “< _Goodness is just an opinion, and a grander concept that cannot be regulated by you or I,_ >” he says, dumping out the rest into the river roaring by. “< _But how can a system that locks me in a mountain for a decade, because they fear my abilities, be good? I’m so tired of it. It’s so wrong. Meenah has promised to destroy this system, and while I regret having to utilize violence, I’ve realized that the struggle for justice is just that— a struggle. Sometimes, sacrifices must be made for the good of the whole._ >”

“< _YEAH!_ >” screams Vriska. “< _NICE! Stick it to the man, Kankri!_ >”

The red biomancy around Vriska’s arms flickers to nothing, and her rigid stance relaxes. She does not move to attack, despite being close enough to Kankri to do so. You wonder, in the back of your head, if she’d actually betray the both of you.

Meenah plants her hands on her hips. “< _You’d be seaprised what fronds you make when you sit down to listen! That’s why I’m gonna be the choicest empress the world’s ever seen. And! I get to consolidate kingdoms too after we get my girls in on the human throne, so it’s all smooth sailing from here._ >”

John tilts his head down, the shadows from the stormlight exaggerating his threatening glare. Vriska cackles, her hands clenching into excited fists. “< _Oh, it’s all *too good,* Peixes, I love it!_ >”

Meenah flushes a little pink. "< _Anyway, Kankri, don't 'splode Vriska, if we offer her something shiny enough she'll prolly see our way of things._ >"

Kankri nods. Vriska chews on her lip like she's about to invite someone to her boudoir.

"< _Hell, I’m seeing your way of things right now!_ >” she chirps, happily. “< _Make me a deal, make me a good one._ >”

She starts rubbing her hands together, greedily, and walks towards Meenah and Kankri. You’re… not really sure what to think. If she really is betraying you, that’s one hell of a quick turnaround. It’s too ridiculous to be believable, but hell, that’s basically Vriska’s entire persona.

John rolls his eye. "Vriska. I am going to fucking flip if you walk over there. I am literally going to murder you," he says, dryly. The reaction is so deadpan and strange that you have no idea if he's poorly acting (plausible) or that he's taking it at face value and Vriska just does betrayal shit like this all the time (also plausible). Or Kankri botched the brain repair and this is just John’s personality now (horrifically plausible).

You know which way the moral compass swings when Vriska pushes her luck and gets just a _little_ too close to Kankri. You watch Meenah frown, realize something's wrong, and start to reach for her trident.

As soon as Meenah's arm moves, Vriska lunges for Kankri, dagger sliding smoothly from her sleeve into her hand. You don't hesitate: you rush Meenah immediately, shifting your sword as you dash. You don't hope to actually strike her, you're too far away to make it. What you hope to do is give Vriska time to make the kill.

Meenah slams her trident between Vriska and Kankri, gets her body in front of him. Metal pings against metal. Kankri lifts his finger towards you as you get your sword up. Vriska punches Meenah in the face with her free arm, and Meenah staggers back, tyrian pink streaming from her nose.

Red sparks crackle along your body. You freeze, sword up in preparation to strike, only a couple feet away from Kankri. This isn't petrification magic, nothing dispellable, or anything you can even physically feel-- it's as though you aren't willing your limbs to move. Like your brain just up and decided not to care about what your body is doing.

Vriska throws herself at Kankri, dagger aimed directly at the forehead. There's enough force in the full-body tackle to send the blade through bone. Meenah waits until the last second to deflect Vriska’s arm with her forearm.

"FUCK ME!" screams Vriska, missing Kankri’s head by an inch. The dagger flies out of her hand and into the water. "Seriously!?"

Kankri points at Vriska. There's a popping noise, as though someone clapped a sealed bag of air between their hands. Vriska's eyes roll back, turn pure white, and she collapses backwards onto the wood. Dead.

You watch John sink lower, defeated, hanging his head. Leftover blood, unsealed by the biomancy, drips from his eye and patters through the empty frame of his glasses. You still can't move, frozen with your sword out.

Meenah kicks Vriska’s corpse away, grimacing. She wipes away the pink of her bloody nose. "< _Okay, well, waterever. We'll probably seduce her later. Somebody go throw her in the brig._ >"

One of the living crewmembers scoots past you to drag Vriska’s corpse further down the deck. He opens a large square trapdoor, throws her body down the hole, then shuts it. He scuttles to go check on the sails. The storm is starting to dissipate, no longer thundering, just clouds of gray and purple looming high above. You’re still trapped with your sword in mid-strike and lookin’ like an asshole. You wonder if John’s given up. You wonder if you should, too. It’ll hurt less when he dies, if you give up now.

There’s the faint smell of ozone, and Roxy’s void portal opens against the flat of the nearest mast. She steps out. Over her shoulder is thrown the Auctor, her arms and hands and ankles tied. She’s still living and breathing, her head level with Roxy’s waist.

They are both covered in the blood of the Auctor’s slain guards. Blues and teals. Feferi looks like she's been through hell, her eyes narrowed, usual bouncy expression wiped clean. Roxy takes it all in, head jerking between John and you and Meenah and Kankri. It hurts to see her so complacent. If you had the ability to say something right now, you’re not sure what it would be.

“Oh my god,” says Roxy, gritting her teeth and trying not to look guilty. She plops Feferi down near John, ignores the hard stare he’s giving her, and chews on her thumbnail. "< _Kankri. Um. Could you, uh, not do that to my broodmate, please?_ >"

"< _While I am generally respectful of a independent lifeform's agency, I feel that he is oppressing the just cause of the revolution, and must be contained._ >"

"< _Can't you... um... walk him far away from you or somefin? He doesn't have magic... I mean... I can tell him not to move or you'll hurt him, will that work?_ >"

Kankri glances at Meenah, who nods. Kankri wiggles his fingers, and you feel yourself walking towards where Feferi was dumped, sheathing your sword along the way. He sits you down next to her, crosslegged, your arms folded. The view is probably pretty strange: you, the Empress of all trolldom, and the bashed up Patrician siting like ducks in a row before the Renounced Empress, waiting to be shot. You don’t realize you’re no longer biomanced until you look down at yourself. No sparks.

"Dirk, sweetie, just please don't try anything, okay?" says Roxy, who has her arms out in front of her like she’s trying to encourage a bunch of children to be quiet. "I promise I'll keep you safe."

You don’t say a word. John’s giving her a look so stone cold you can feel it from where you sit.

“< _Roxy,_ >” he says, with a heavy Alternian accent. You watch him fly through a list of objections, questions, and betrayals, but he settles on a simple reminder. “< _Our *girls.*_ >”

Roxy takes a step back, like it physically hit her in the stomach. Meenah scoffs. “< _Oh, c’mon, babe, don’t let him guilt trip ya. They’re gonna be *our* girls._ >”

Out of the corner of your vision, you see Feferi staring at you, like she's in a deep trance. Like she is willing something to happen with all her might. You don't know what she's expecting. Her body will probably be culled, and she will go to her final death. Which, sucks for her, but fuck if you care at this point. You're not dumb, you're not going to attack when it'd be fruitless.

Roxy moves to stand next to Meenah, her head lowered, not looking at either you or John. You don’t think she gives a rat’s ass about Feferi, just you and John, but you are at a loss as to what to say to her. Failure’s clogging your brain up.

Meenah launches into some dumb monologue about how “< _bitchin’_ >” it is that everything worked out well, that she got what she wanted, blah blah, who fucking cares. Feferi doesn't stop looking at you. At the end of Meenah's victory speech, Kankri shifts to point a finger at Feferi.

“< _Trigger warning._ >”

John screams in one last hurrah, flickers white at a rapid pace, every iteration of him instantly wrangled into death before he can split. A black tentacle wraps around his neck and slams his head into the deck. You hear the wood crack.

Feferi’s right next to you. You're going to get hit with the excess liquid of a body exploding. She keeps staring at you. Tyrian eyes bore into your soul.

Ah.

Kankri raises a finger towards her. You gently reach out, and touch Feferi's chest. Her soul is ready for you, wants you to save her, comes out nice and easy, and you pull it from her body like taffy as Kankri fires off his biomancy. She's in the palm of your hand when her skin and muscle and blood and hair and bone explode into a fine spray, dusting you all over with pink. The clothes and jewelry left over fall to the floor with a dull clatter. You sneak your fingers under your blindfold, calmly, and pop her into your eye.

There's a moment of silence from every party on that ship. Roxy’s got this look of utter shock plastered on her face. Meenah has her lip drawn up in a grossed out sneer. Kankri seems apathetic. John’s face is still smashed against the deck, but his shoulders are lifting like he’s in the midst of silent laughter. The crew of the ship is completely enraptured, the lady in the crow's nest has a bowl of popcorn.

"< _What,_ >" says Meenah. "< _Seariously, what. Kankri. Make him get that soul out._ >" 

Red sparks along your arm, and you feel yourself undo your own blindfold, let it fall to the floor. It flutters off in the strong river wind, off the boat, RIP basic black blindfold. Your fingers make a pincher shape, twist, and burrow themselves into your 'pupil,' your muscle around it expanding to fit.

You didn't realize it until now, until your body is being commandeered by another, but there's sort of an art to holding souls. You thought it was just an instinct everybody had, but perhaps some people don't possesses it. Like he isn't... he isn't doing it right, he isn't calling to Feferi. She's a living soul, and he's not talking to her, so it's not going to work. Your fingers pass through the white orb without feeling its barely-there solidity.

"< _I can't get a grip on it,_ >" says Kankri, after a couple attempts. You remove your fingers from your void. They drip with inky black.

Meenah scratches her head. "< _Wait. Okay. Does this even fuckin’ matter? Her body is dolphinitely gone, which means I'm the only tyrian left, so this counts right? I'm Empress now?_ >"

"< _It *dolphinitely* doesn't count,_ >" says John, muffled. He sounds weirdly giddy.

"< _What do you think, bay?_ >" Meenah asks Roxy.

Roxy makes this noncommittal "Uhhhhh" noise, gaze flicking between you, John, and Meenah. Meenah sighs.

"< _A'ight, chop his head off, time to operate._ >"

"No!" Roxy screams, she lashes out and clings to Meenah’s shoulder. "No, Meenah! < _Meenah, you promised! You can't hurt him! You can't!_ >"

Meenah winces, looking a little guilty. "< _Yeah but... babe, he's kinda got the soul of the beach we've been wanting to oust for like, a glubbin' sweep. We gotta scorched earth her, you know?_ >"

"< _I don't care! I said I didn't want him hurt!_ >"

Meenah gestures helplessly at you. "< _It's fine! We'll play a fun little chess game after we behead him and it'll be totes fine! Totes fine!_ >"

Roxy stomps her foot on the ground. "< _No! I’m not letting you! I’m leaving if you put a single bruise on him!_ >"

Meenah looks freaked. “< _Wait. Babe. No. Let’s talk this out first, please?_ >”

She grabs Roxy’s shoulders, urgently, then gets flustered that you and John are still around and witnessing a lover’s spat. She grimaces at the two of you, deciding what to do. Roxy’s too impatient to wait, so Meenah orders a hasty, “< _Somebody go throw ‘em in the brig._ >”

The black tendril around John’s neck dissipates, and he sits up on his knees, slow. His nose is a bit crooked, bleeding from both nostrils. He looks like he’s trying to stifle a grin. Red biomancy still sparkles over his arm and face every other second. Some crew member, with their crossbow trained on you, grabs you by the collar and drags you to the same trapdoor Vriska was thrown in. You keep your arms folded and remain obstinate, like an asshole.

Kankri’s got his hands up, so you don’t dare resist. John gets the same treatment as you, although he needs two crew members to pull him. He seems too smashed into incoherency to put up a fighting effort. You’re amazed he’s even conscious. You think it’s got something to do with the biomancy, like Kankri plugged him up and stopped the most extreme pain. Nice of him.

You’re thrown in first, and you land on Vriska’s gangly bone-sharp corpse, which you’re pretty sure is harder than the wood underneath. You’re too busy throwing her into the corner to catch John. He lands with a soft flop next to you. 

The crew member closes the trapdoor. Blackness descends in the musty store room. It smells like stale onions in here. You take a moment to collect yourself in the dark.

John is missing an arm, an eye, can’t duplicate himself, lost a fuckton of blood, is abhorred by the Lord of Death, and is absent from the palace; Jane’s probably having a manic field day right now. Any way you look at it, shit’s fucked. Shit’s utterly fucked. You are two inches from trying to suicide mission this shit, pry yourself up through the cracks in the deck and make a last ditch effort to behead Kankri. The thing that’s keeping you from giving up at the moment is John. 

The soul in your eye provides some ambient glow, but you’d like a bit more. You flick your pointer finger out, letting your cantrip magic flow through you, and a small flame hovers over your skin. It’s just enough to see the storage and hammocks and nets around you, and John’s beat-up face flickering in the shadows.

“We’re alone! And I’m not biomanced anymore! That means we’ve got a chance!” chirps John, leaping to his feet. He proceeds to stagger forward, clutch his head with his able hand. He stumbles like a drunkard. You cannot see it in the dark, but you hear the patter of blood hit the wooden floor.

"Ouch," John chokes out. "That really smarts."

You catch him when he topples over you.


	28. Eye for an Eye

It takes a great amount of effort to kneel to the ground without dropping him, but with some self-belief and your killer ab muscles, you manage to lay him down. You position him flat on his back, sit next to him. You lower the cantrip flame in order to see him. The ship sways in the waves. You hear the muffled sound of the river rushing beneath you. John blinks his eye open, waking up from the brief unconscious stint.

Caked, dried brown trails from both his nostrils and ends at his split upper lip. His nose is crooked to the left, but the difference is slight. You only notice because you’ve long since memorized the structure of his face. His puncture wound is the ugliest injury on him; his eye contorted into a horseshoe shape. All the glass is gone from the left frame. There’s nicks on the skin surrounding it, from the explosive impact of the lens. Blood is clotted around the lids and between his lashes, which will flutter on occasion, unable to fully blink. You could see the white orb of it when Kankri was keeping him from bleeding out, but it’s now a wet red color. The leftover, droopy waterline shines with a dark scarlet in the light of your small flame. 

It looks like all the parts are still there. If he gets out of this, a talented healer like Jane can probably patch his vision up just fine. 

John's eye flickers a bright blue, and he takes one deep, calming breath. His expression is deadpan. He doesn't exhale. You're irrationally freaked out that he up and died right there, but he quirks his head towards you, alert and in control of himself. The blood no longer pours from his residual arm, but pumps out in short spurts, about once every two seconds. 

"I can turn off my breath, and then my heart doesn't need to work so hard," he whispers, so quiet you can barely hear him. "I figured..."

"Yeah," you say, dumbly. Your brain finally kicks into action. In any other situation, you'd request he let himself bleed out, so the resurrection process restores his "death wound," his missing limb. However…

"If I don't let you die right now, you're going to permanently lose your arm, because we lack the appendage to reattach due to Vantas exploding it into smithereens," you think aloud. "But, if you die right now… I think there’s a high chance that you’re going to stay that way. I don’t think I can make this decision for you: do you want me to let you die?"

You watch him think through it. How he wont be able to use magic as well, how he’ll have to reteach himself to cook. How, maybe, if you’re fooling yourself, he’s thinking about how he can’t die and leave you all alone.

"… It's okay, I'll have Jade make me a cool magic arm prosthetic," he whispers. "And you can futz with the technomancy on it. It'll be fun."

'Fun' isn't what you would call limb loss, but you're not going to crush his silver lining. He's going to need as much cheer as he can to make it through. At least it’s a clear answer. You've got some emergency medical procedures to perform, and you don’t know how much time you have before Roxy and Meenah sort their shit out.

You've done this before, so you're quick about it. You’ve still got your katana, so you use it to chop off the sleeve under his residual limb. You don’t bother with pulling the rest of the cloth back to see the break Kankri left— it looks like some of it is plastered to his skin by dried blood, which provides some semblance of a bandage. You take a brief detour to shuffle over to Vriska’s corpse and search her for a small pocket knife, which you find in her boot. You rip a strap from the excess sleeve, slip it over the residual limb, tie it, and stop the blood flow by shoving the dagger through the knot and twisting it as tight as it’ll go. He can't scream, so he makes these wheezing noises, pathetic whimpers that go straight to your heart each time you rotate the knob. You're amazed he doesn't pass out from the pain, or that he's not biting through his tongue or something equally grievous. You wonder how much of his body he can regulate.

"I'm so sorry, John," you murmur, finishing it off and wrapping the handle of the sheathed dagger into the strap so it will stay in place. The blood dripping out of the stump slows to a trickle. You immediately shift to cut up the rest of the sleeve into something he can press over his eye.

"Are you?" he whispers, shaky.

As you layer squares over squares, cut his sleeve up without looking at him, your soul starts to ache. What if you fail. What if you both die here. What if you make a mistake and you kill him. What if you never leave this ship. And your brain steps out of the way, lets you say something without thinking.

“I’m sorry for everything.”

You position yourself to sit crosslegged on the side with his able limb, which he moves to rest on your knee. You take off his glasses and press the black, square pad to his dead socket, then lift up his head so you can tie a strap around it to keep the pressure up. You slip his glasses back on over the eyepatch.

You can't avoid eye contact, John curiously looking at you, blinking softly. You watch a bead of sweat drip down his forehead. You dab it away. His skin's a bit too cold. He doesn't say anything, so you pull from your heart, and let it all flow. You talk slow, making sure he can hear you, and that you don't forget anything.

"I'm sorry for telling Jane your troubles, when you clearly wanted me to keep them private. I'm sorry for trying to remove Vriska from your life. I get it now, that she's trying to do her best for you too. It was greedy of me to try and take your partner away. I'm sorry for fucking blackmailing you. I'm not going to act on it. You can kill me if we get out of this, banish me, fire me, I absolutely deserve it. And I'm sorry for trying to manipulate you, for not telling you straight up what I want from you, for not being a good friend. I'm so, so sorry, John. For everything."

He makes this choked, sobbing sound, like you caught him by surprise, but he swallows it down. He gives you this forlorn look, lips parting. Even with one eye, his gaze draws you in like a fishing hook.

His voice is clear when he says, "... I'm sorry too. But... I don't... I don't know how to say what I'm sorry about."

You’re not sure what he has to apologize for. You’d help him out, but you have no idea where he’s going with this.

"Can you try," you ask, as gently as you can.

He visibly swallows. He doesn't look at you when he whispers, "I'm so bad at feelings, Dirk. I never know what I'm feeling, it's like, I can't form the words, or I can't explain what's going on in my head. But I always know what I want, if that makes sense. I just can't figure out how to explain _why_ I want those things. Not even to myself."

That clarifies a lot. It's fucking amazing that he can read other people so well without being able to analyze his own head. You come to the bizarre realization that he is the emotional opposite of you: you could literally spend all day analyzing your own motivations and why you feel a certain way, but other people’s motives are generally a mystery to you until you straight up ask them. You wonder what it’s like to not understand yourself. You wonder what this has to do with an apology.

You fold your eyebrows down, tilt your head. He chews on his lower lip, shuts his eye tight.

"I'm sorry that I might have, maybe, seduced you and played with your heart," he rasps. "Gosh, that sounds so awful. That's a bad apology, too. But the problem is I don't actually know if I really like you or if I just wanted a Dirk Strider in my pocket to do some shitty card tricks with. I know I only wanted you at first because I thought your soulwalking thing might come in handy, but now I don't know! I don't know why I want you in bed with me, I don't know why I want to do nice things for you, I don't know why I want to cook with you or talk with you or anything. I don’t know if I have any real feelings about you at all! I don’t know what’s genuine and what isn’t! So I’m sorry I’m such an ass. I'm sorry I’m so empty."

You weren’t expecting that.

You knew he was manipulating you, but you never, in a million years, expected him to actually admit that. But none of this bothers you. You don’t think he’s been acting ingenuine towards you at all. You think his hurt from your betrayal was real, you think the nice things he did for you weren’t just because he wanted to play you, and you’re at least 90% sure he thinks you’re fuckin’ hot.

"Shhh," you say. You stroke his hair. "You don’t need to apologize for any of that. I know you have a manipulative streak."

John's eye gets wet, as though he's heartbroken. "No! I _do_ need to apologize! Don’t you get it? I don't know if I really, truly want to be friends with you or if I just- if I just want to exploit that beautiful heart you've given me! If I just want you to do things for me, to get me out of bed in the morning, to be another Vriska."

"It could be both."

"I don't want it to be both! Why can't I just be plain old normal friends with you? It's like, I just want to be a good person. I try so hard to be selfless; I'd kill myself a thousand times if it meant I could be heroic and sensitive and kind… But no matter how hard I try I can't change! Everything I do turns out to be some kind of stupid trick, even if I think it’s genuine at the time, it turns out weeks later it was part of some dumb gambit I didn’t know I was playing. I'm sorry I can't turn off, Dirk. I'm sorry I can't stop," he rasps. "I'm so sorry for ruining your life."

A tear slips from the corner of his eye, trails down the side of his face, but his voice and his expression don't match with the sentimentality of it. You think it’s due to physical pain. You wipe it away with your pinky.

"You're over-exaggerating your role in the ability to ruin my life. It's all on me," you tell him. "But despite tripping ass backwards over my own sweet self, I'm glad you brought me to the palace. I like all this drama. I like you. I like your black heart painted over with gold. But I don’t think it’s quite as rotten as you think it is."

He blinks at you, surprised. His gaze transitions into something colder, eye clearing of its sadness. He slips into his Patrician persona, and his voice comes out resonant and commanding. You think it's his attempt to be direct, for once. "Kiss me."

You brush your thumb across his lips. "Is that an order, sunshine?"

"Please, Dirk."

You snuff the flame on your fingertip and dip down to meet him. He has dried blood on his lips, but you can’t bring yourself to care. You press as gently as you can, feel him quiver, hear him make these little whisper-moans that would set your heart afire if the circumstances were different. You missed this. You give into temptation, kiss him again, then again, feel him desperately try to match your rhythm. He opens for you easy. He melts like butter when you press your fingers to his temple, when you brush his loose hair back behind his ear. He starts to kiss you like this is the last taste he'll ever get of you, like he's given up on living. He clings to your shoulder with his able arm, digging his nails into the fine cloth of your cloak.

You're so engaged with him you don't notice when someone enters the hull. They tap you on the shoulder.

You think it's one of the crew, at first, so you detach from John and sit up on your knees. You whip around."< _Piss right the fuck-_ > Oh. Hey."

The light from Feferi’s soul is barely enough to see the fuzzy outline of Roxy Lalonde, shifting nervously from foot to foot. There’s a void portal open on the floor behind her.

You don’t feel much of anything when you look at her. She could be here to betray you again, or to rescue only you and not John, or to carry out some order Meenah commanded. And besides, you’re too lovesick from the kiss to move on to the next rollercoaster of an emotion.

"Uh, hey team hey," says Roxy, meekly. "Sorry for interrupting the mackin’, but I'm… uh, here to bust you out. That's right, big twist, Roxy's got some triple betrayal up her sleeve. Double treasoning all up in this bitch."

You and John stare at her. John props himself up on his elbow, narrowing his eye.

Roxy clenches her fists at her side. She tilts her head towards the ground, glaring at it. “I… uh… okay. Okay, I don’t really feel good about doing this. But I don’t really feel good about doing the other thing, either. So I’m gonna do the prolly morally incorrect thing and play my cards close to my chest, and I’m gonna switch sides constantly like a fish floppin’ around on a beach.”

She pauses to gesture at the portal behind her. “I’m gonna take you one place. Your pick. And I’m gonna drop you off there. And then I’m gonna go back to Meenah and pretend like I don’t know how you got out. And hey, maybe I can blame it on the Auctor’s planned ambush? That’d be cool if the timing works out on that one.” 

You open your mouth to berate her. That this is in nobody’s best interest, that you cannot believe she’s trying to do some fantasy!Benedict Arnold shit and just wait to see who comes out triumphant, that you were under the impression she was sweet and nice and _kind_ and didn't just try to play for the winning team. You do none of this, because John’s pulled his mouth up into a soft smile.

“Roxy,” John rasps. “I’m so glad you came back.”

Roxy’s mouth drops open. After a beat, it crumples into a weepy frown, and she presses the heels of her hands into her blindfold. Her shoulders sag forward, she takes the kind of staggering breath you take before a good cry, and chokes out, “< _I’m sorry, John, I’m so sorry._ >”

Your heart aches. You stand, open your arms for her, and she takes the hug. She nuzzles against you and wraps her arms around your waist and cries tears hidden by her blindfold.

“I’m sorry, I’m reely sorry,” she sobs, into your shoulder. “I don’t know what to do! I can’t just leave Meenah! I grew up with her, I’ve been with her and all these trolls my entire life. It’d break my heart if I let her die or stabbed her in the back or somefin. But I made so many friends at the palace, and I straight up don’t want to kill my baby daddy, and I love you so much, Dirk. I love you and Rose and Dave. I don’t deserve to be forgiven but like, I hope you at least don’t wanna behead me after all this is over. I’m sorry I gotta step back. I gotta step out of this and let fate decide what I do, because I sure as hell can’t.”

You don’t think you can provide Ultimate Forgiveness for Roxy, you think that’ll be John’s choice in the end. But you understand, and you’re not so hurt over it. You don’t doubt that you’re something important to her, that she only wants the best for those she cherishes, and that she’s having a hard time prioritizing her loved ones. You hug her tighter.

The ship starts to shake. You hear yelling outside, then a bunch of popping noises. Apparently the Auctor’s ambush has started. You wonder if they know she’s in your eye.

You manage to heft John up in a fireman’s carry, so his torso is strung across your shoulders. Roxy picks up Vriska’s corpse like it weighs as much as a pillow. You’re pretty sure Vriska is constructed entirely of massive piles of hair and rattly bones, so, makes sense.

You tell Roxy exactly where to drop you off: Jake’s basement. You figure he’ll know how to speed up the bleed-out from John’s amputation. John gets his arm back once he’s resurrected, his eye stays wounded until you can get around to finding a healer. After that, you mobilize defenses and see what’s up with the Alternian side of the palace and figure out where to go from there. Oh, and probably bring back Vriska at some point. You begrudgingly admit you need her around.

Roxy escorts you through the Void. You step out of a wall in Jake’s warehouse, in the morgue part of it. You’re in a long row of square drawers that probably hold all sorts of unspeakable horrors. Roxy sets Vriska on the ground. 

As soon as you get settled, Jake steps out from around the corner of the row, dual pistols aimed at your head. He’s dressed in some of his more formal Death Priest wear, for some baffling reason— a wild variety of sashes and obis tied around a wide green skirt, and sleeves fastened up to his shoulders to give him room for fighting. He has like, six guns shoved in random places on his person. He looks pissed as hell. Once he recognizes that you’re not baddies, his face softens. He lowers his guns, then places a single finger to his lips. When you listen, you hear voices speaking in Alternian. 

Roxy looks at you, then John, then shrugs. She gives you a rather meek wave goodbye, and you feel John lift his arm to wave back for you. She pops back into her void, and the portal closes, leaving a plain brick wall behind.

You wonder if you’ll ever see her again.

Jake gestures at you, a ‘come hither’ motion with his pistol. You abandon Vriska and follow him, still lugging John around. You turn the corner Jake emerged from, and he holds out his hand for you to stop. The next row over looks the same as the last: drawers and drawers of corpses and taxidermy. You can’t see where the voices are coming from, but they must be just around the edge of the next shelf.

“< _Is the second in line some… indentured hoarder executioner? That’s pretty dang weird._ >”

Another voice answers in a tone that sounds like they’re telling a spooky ghost story. “< _Or maybe they’re keeping him locked up for his own good._ >”

They’re either Meenah’s forces from the seaside attack that slipped through the Auctor’s defense line, or Alternia got news that the Auctor was dead and you’ve now got to fight half the city. You’re guessing that it’s —thankfully— the former, as any troll official in the Alterian half of the palace knows about Jake English. You wonder if Meenah ordered them to try to sneak in and kidnap him.

John pokes your leg, like he wants to get down. You crouch, help him get off your shoulders. You push him back against a solid looking drawer, so he can sit up. It’s probably a good idea to shed the weight, as Jake looks ready to turn the corner and attack. You shift next to him and draw your katana.

Jake skims around the edge of the shelf, and you follow. He cocks his pistols up at the three trolls down the row: all in Meenah’s tyrian-red-gold colors. A couple drawers are open around them. They’re rooting through his taxidermy collection. There’s a couple body parts on the ground, the pink-stained cotton puffing out of arms and legs where they were ripped at the seams. The trolls all look up at him, disinterested.

“What in the blazes!?” Jake screams, actually dropping his guns on the floor in order to clutch at his own hair. “What are you doing!? What are you doing to my things!?”

They seem to realize that this is the person they’re after, and two of them draw their swords. The third summons fire to her hands, ready to burn this place down.

“STOP TOUCHING MY THINGS!” Jake yells. His eyes flare with a golden white light.

He contorts his hands, and every drawer in that hallway slams open in one loud bang. Then, you hear all the drawers in the hallway over slam open with a similar bang. Jake siphons his entire soul into all his nearby dolls and corpses and collections, and his body collapses to the ground with nothing to hold it up.

This is why Jake is a shitty necromancer. He either goes too little or too far, nothing in between. This time, he’s going way fucking overboard. 

You sheathe your katana and watch the tragedy unfold. His necromanced bodies don’t have magic or special abilities --that’s sort of the point of Jake stuffing them-- but he’s going to win on sheer manpower alone. The corpses in the drawers on the top row climb out of their boxes and hurl themselves over the mage. She screams as the legion suffocates her with their weight, her fire smothered without room for oxygen. The fighters can’t rescue her before she’s crushed by a pile of life sized dolls, but they manage to cut up the corpses in their immediate area, cotton flying everywhere as they slice each body in half. You step aside and let about ten or so shambling corpses drag their feet past you, their “eyes” flickering with Jake’s light. There’s either buttons sewn over their lids or they have fake glassy marbles with pupils painted on them embedded in their skulls, so the necromancy oozes from their busted sockets like mist off a swamp.

You peek down the next row over to see if John’s alright. He rasp-giggles as a half-stuffed corpse clumsily drags itself over him on all fours like a friendly sea sponge. “Oh, ha ha, hi Jake!”

You also see Vriska shambling her way over towards you too, her eyes glowing with Jake’s golden necromancy. Funny.

When you glance back over, the dolls have managed to swarm the two swordsman. The corpses that don’t have their mouths sewn shut are trying to _bite_ the trolls to death, and hell no, you’re not waiting around for that torture fest to end. You unsheathe your katana, calmly walk over, and behead the both of them. You try to avoid nicking Jake’s corpses, but you accidentally leave a big cleft in somebody’s torso. Oops. 

Jake’s soul does not siphon back into his body once everything’s said and done. You guess some things don’t change. A couple dolls that can’t stay standing start digging their fingers into your legs, clawing up the leather. You kick them away. “Jake. Jake, I know you can hear me. Do I seriously have to do this again.”

Jake’s body, face down on the ground, does not move. None of the dolls indicate he heard you. But Vriska’s corpse trips over another one and lands in a majestic faceplant, and you resist the urge to laugh.

You take off the shitty katana you have strapped to your back, sheath and all. You walk over to Jake’s body, pushing aside the dolls as you go. You wind up your sword like you’re about to hit a homerun. You swing down, strike him in the ribs with a loud crack. Jake’s body jerks, his head lifting up, wheezing. About half the corpses drop to the ground, his soul siphoned back where it belongs.

Usually you had to hit him twice, but he’s improved as a necromancer in his adult years. He manages to draw himself back in, his eyes slowly fading to their normal, pupiled green. All the dolls fall to the ground, nothing to hold them up. He stands up, shaky, rubbing his side where you hit him. He looks around mournfully at the mess he made, probably sad about having to reorganize a big chunk of his collection.

He helps you carry John and Vriska to his cleaning area. You ask Jake if the palace has been invaded, but apparently he has no fucking idea if this was just a stealth mission or a palace-wide invasion. He said he killed about four other trolls with his pistols before you arrived, and barricaded the sole entrance to his basement shortly afterwards. You don’t hear anybody slamming on the door, so you wonder if Meenah thought a party of seven would be enough.

You get John on a worktable, have him lay flat. You watch Jake inspect John. Tilting his chin up, poking at his arm, feeling out his neck, that kind of shit.

"Mmmm, you've always had a poor constitution. High chance you'll be dead in eight hours without magical aid," hums Jake.

"Wow. Thanks for your confidence, Jake," rasps John. “Uh, anyway, can you like, speed it up somehow? I kind of like my left arm and want it back.”

“Sure. I’ll bleed you out,” says Jake. He tuts at John’s arm. “Still might take a bit, though.”

John grimaces. Jake double pistols at John. “Don’t worry, cousin! I have chloroform.”

“You always have my back, Jake,” says John, relieved. He makes a pistol motion with his able arm, blinks at his residual stub, and mutters, “Uh… pretend this is a double pistol.”

Better Jake doing this than you, you suppose. You really don’t want to watch John bleed out. As Jake starts pulling on his gloves to begin the procedure, the gears in your head start turning, figuring out what to do next. The immediate threat of John’s health is checked off your list, next item is the deal with Death Meenah made. You need him able to clone if you want to have any chance at winning a second round with Kankri.

“Jake, if you have a spare moment, would you resurrect Vriska?” you ask. “I’m going to walk to Death and ask them to drop the insta-kill thing they’ve got targeted on John’s retcon powers.”

“Yes, of course. If you need to make a deal… The Lord is fond of, uh,” Jake stares down at the floor like he’s trying to fire laser beams at it. “Aesthetically ship-shape men.”

“I am willing to perform a variety of sex acts on a giant skeleton if needed,” you say.

“Are you excited about that?” says Jake. “You sound excited.”

“I am not excited.”

“You sound excited, dude,” croaks John, mildly offended.

You ignore them. You shut your eyes, focus on the blackness behind your lids. You feel yourself transition into lukewarm darkness.

"Brave face, luv," you hear Jake tell John, distantly. "Breathe in, deep breaths, there we go…"


	29. Do Not Go Gently

In the infinite blackness of your void, Feferi lounges on a bright pink beach chair.

“Hi!” she waves, as you stand over her. She adjusts her sunglasses, and plucks a pink martini off a seashell themed end table. “Everything going good out there?”

“Not really, no. But we’re figuring it out.” You watch a newspaper materialize in her hand, and she starts to flip through it. “How are you doing that.”

“Doing what?”

“That.” You gesture at the furniture, the newspaper, the martini she’s drinking from.

She shrugs. “I don’t know! I can just make whatever I want in here! It’s pretty beachin’.”

That just plain isn’t fair. You’d _kill_ to be able to make some bizarre pink beach furniture in your head. With those powers, you would hands-down construct some surreal mental sex dungeon. “Alright. Well, I’m about to walk myself to Death, so I’d strongly suggest you stay put and don’t follow, lest the Lord takes you up into his misogynistic skeleton arms.”

“Shore! No problem!” Feferi pauses to salute you. “Walk fearlessly into death, my frond!”

You do as ordered. Feferi disappears into the featureless blackness as you trudge on, towards Death. For once, you hope you get the Lord as the initial head. You feel the Lady won’t take kindly to your seduction tactics. You walk for a couple minutes, breathing deep, focusing on the calm heartrate you’ve been granted in this liminal space. The ‘body’ you inhabit here is free from the aches and pains of battle, a kind perk bestowed upon you by your brain.

“WELL WELL WELL,” booms a voice that sounds like it’s been buried in a grave for millenia. “LOOK WHO COMES CRAWLING HERE TO DIE.”

Lucky you. The Lord rushes into view, his giant skeletal form emerging from darkness like the bow of a ship from fog. You stand your ground, wait for his massive claw to loom threateningly over you, look him dead in the glowing red sockets.

“Actually,” you say, and you drop to your knees. “I’ve come crawling here to beg.”

His spine curves forward, his Cairo Overcoat drooping around you, his skull looming over you. His detached, floating jaw flops up and down, barely in time with his words. “YOU’RE BEGGING TO DIE.”

“No. God. What.” You pinch the bridge of your nose, and take a deep breath. You steel yourself to ignore his dumb bullshit and return his gaze. “Look. You’ve apparently got some pact with The Renounced Empress to impale every one of the Patrician’s clones upon creation, and I want you to drop it wholesale.”

“NO. THE UNGRATEFUL FUCK IS A WASTE OF LIFE. HE NEEDS TO BE TAUGHT A-”

“Yeah, I get it, you hate him,” you interrupt. “Perhaps I can offer something to make the deal worthwhile. Particularly, my aesthetically ship-shape masculine form.”

“WHY WOULD I WANT TO LOOK LIKE YOU.”

“No. I mean I’d fuck you. With zero hesitation. Do you have a dick. A literal boner.” You clap your hands and rub them together, ironically. “I’m fuckin’ ready to find out, boy-o. Vow to me, drop the insta-death thing, and I’ll hurl my pants off and bend over faster than you can say ‘micro/macro kink.’” 

The head creaks, rotates, the gears cranking and turning to shift the massive skull to the Lady. She’s already screaming, “NO! NO NO NO NO!” by the time her head has slotted into its position. “NO! GROSS! YOU WILL BE DOING NO SUCH THING TO MY BROTHER! I FORBID IT!”

You sigh, and stand up. The Lady shifts back, at a more normal speaking distance. “Are you going to drop the pact in his stead, then. Under the threat of having to watch your conjoined brother ravish a nubile young thing.”

“UM. I UNFORTUNATELY CANNOT! WE ARE TWO SEPARATE BEINGS,” says the Lady, her voice smooth as a marble mausoleum. “BUT PERHAPS, INSTEAD OF YOU DOING UNSPEAKABLE ACTS TO OUR SKELETAL FRAME, I WOULD LIKE TO QUESTION WHY YOU ARE GOING TO SUCH LENGTHS TO HELP THE PATRICIAN.”

“What do you mean.”

"WHY DO YOU WANT HIM TO WIN SO BAD?" asks the Lady, with a gentle voice, one that sounds like it's been echoing through the walls of a tomb for a hundred years. "YOU HAVE A PSUEDO-SISTER THAT WILL TAKE CARE OF YOU ON THE 'OPPOSITE' SIDE OF THIS CONFLICT! I SIMPLY DO NOT THINK THAT STANDING BY THE PATRICIAN IS THE GENTLEST OPTION FOR YOUR SOUL."

You narrow your eyes. Death is semi-omnipresent, so you figure you can speak your mind, since they know your feelings already. "Isn't it enough that I love him."

"THAT IS WHAT I MEAN! ALL THAT LOVE IN YOUR HEART, AND HE CANNOT RETURN IT." She moves her gigantic pointer finger down, to prod you gently in the chest with her claw. "THAT IS NOT VERY FAIR TO YOU."

You don't doubt her words. There's a couple things she could mean by it. The first thing that comes to mind is in relation to what he said during his apology: that he isn't clear on his feelings, but he knows what he wants. But you don't care about that. He _wants_ you, he wants to be close to you, reasoning behind it be dammed. The second thing that comes to mind is what he said the last time you were in death together: that he cannot fall in love. But… you have a philosophical problem with that. Love doesn't have to be starry eyed romance.

"How are you defining love? I think he loves me, but not in the classic, poetic way. I don't care if he doesn't feel the same 'passion' that I do. Passion is a fickle fucking thing; I'd take commitment and friendship and care with some lust sprinkled on top over plain old 'passion' any day, and I think John's damn good at providing that."

The Lady lowers her claw. You get the impression she's frowning. "WELL, THAT'S NOT ROMANTIC AT ALL."

"Don't get me wrong, it'd make me happy if he felt passion for me. I'd love to stare tenderly into his eyes and have that soul-breeching gaze returned. Since you brought it up, can you at least tell me if he's literally incapable of romantic love or if he's got some severe feelings depression-damper that can be lifted with recovery?"

The head switches, with a series of clanks and poofs of dust. "NO," says the Lord. "WHERE'S THE FUN IN THAT. I WANT TO SEE YOU TRY. AND FAIL. TO CHANGE HIM."

You _almost_ respond with 'I will not fail.' No, you've learned this lesson. You know better by now.

"I cannot change him," you say, clenching your fists at your side. "He can only change himself."

"THEN WHY STAY WITH HIM AT ALL. YOU'RE JUST. DICKING AROUND NEXT TO HIM AND HOPING HE'LL GET BETTER BY HIMSELF. THAT'S ASININE."

You hesitate. He has a point. Silent support can only go so far, especially if the person you're supporting doesn't _want_ to change. Or if he's trying to change himself in an ineffective way. You think he knows something's wrong, judging by his apology to you, but you think killing himself on the regular as penance for his antics isn't the best way to change himself.

Your voice comes out quiet, mumbling, mostly directed towards yourself. "I can tread the line between passive support and forced fixing. You know, with loving encouragement. Middle way and all."

"HA. HA HA. WITH YOUR EXTREMIST MEDDLING DISPOSITION. NOT FUCKING LIKELY."

The head swaps again. The Lady looks at you with big, sad eyes. "MAYBE... YOU SHOULD CONSIDER PARTING WAYS. ALL THAT WORK FOR SOMEBODY WHO MIGHT NOT BE ABLE TO RECIPROCATE THE EFFORT YOU GIVE... THAT'S NOT A HEALTHY RELATIONSHIP TO ME!"

You grit your teeth. That really pisses you off. "Are you deluded? Life isn't some equal exchange one-to-one give-and-take romance novel. Isn't it enough that what he gives back satisfies me?"

“IT IS CERTAINLY NOT! WHAT IF HE NEVER PUTS WORK INTO YOU, DESPITE THE WORK YOU PUT IN TO HIM?”

“I have different needs,” you say, narrowing your eyes. “And those needs include an individualized handmade seven course candlelit dinner that the light of my life slaved over, crafted with love and fucking kisses.”

“I DON’T QUITE FOLLOW.”

“You don’t need to,” you say. You fold your mouth to the side, mad that you let yourself go on a tangent. “I’m not here to debate the nature of Love with Death. I’m here to save someone important to me. So. What’s it gonna be. I’ll do anything to get him free from this curse. I’ll suck off every rib in your anatomy if I have to.”

The head clunks and clatters to the Lord. “FUCK OFF. I’M NOT SOME LOOSE MORALLED SLORE. (SLORE MEANS SLUT AND WHORE. BUT IN ONE WORD). LOOK. THERE ISN’T SHIT YOU CAN DO TO FREE HIM FROM MY DEATHLY PLAGUE. HE’S JUST *THAT* HORRIBLE.”

You press a hand to your mouth, to try and think of a next move. But the Lord keeps talking. “I WAS THINKING OF KEEPING HIM OVER HERE THE NEXT TIME HE DIES. PERMANENTLY. THEN I CAN FINALLY TOSS THE FIVE HUNDRED FUCKING SOULS HE’S LEFT WITH ME.”

Your heart skips a panicked beat. “What.”

Despite the Lord having no facial muscles, you get the impression he’s grinning wider. “YEAH! YEAH. I THINK I WILL! BYE FUCKING BYE JOHN FUCKING EGBERT. HIS NEXT DEATH WILL BE HIS LAST.”

You are flabbergasted. “That’s- that’s not _legal._ There’s got to be some- some deity rule that prevents you- You can’t-”

“BITCH. I’M A MOTHERFUCKING GOD. I DO WHAT I WANT. STAY AROUND ANY LONGER AND I’LL DRAG YOU INTO THE AFTERLIFE PLANES TOO.”

You stare up at Death, your mouth gaping, your bloodstream hammering through your ears. You feel yourself enter panic mode, where your thoughts are quick and sloppy, searching through every outcome to try and prevent failure _at all costs._ You cannot let John be taken by Death. You couldn’t go on if you failed here, if you let that happen. 

You get one last ditch idea, one that comes into your brain like a jerking reflex. You are unable to think through the consequences, you can only see how this will solve the current issue. You _cannot_ let John permanently die.

So. Is Death considered dead? 

"ANY LAST WORDS?"

"Just a question," you say, lowering your head. "Do you have one soul or two?"

You do not wait for an answer. You lash out, slap your hand against the base of their great ribcage, and feel the loose tug of souls at the edges of your fingertips. You fling your wrist back, and they come with you, scarlet and emerald liquid threading from under your nails down to their bones. In a whir of light and color and warm wind, you pull them into your palm, the great skeletal form dissipating into long streams of red and green. 

When all is said and done, you stand in an utterly empty plane of blackness, Death in your hand. Their soul is a ball of white, with one green and one red minnow circling each other, infinitely, inside it. You pop it in your vacant pupil. Your vision takes on the usual white haze, although there’s a bit of excess color at the very edges.

You try very hard not to think of the consequences and fail spectacularly. You have _no idea_ how this impacts the world. You know for sure that resurrections won’t work while you’ve usurped Death. All the Death temples around the world failing to resurrect people’s loved ones… fuck, that tugs at the heartstrings. You don’t have enough information to know if the cost of this kidnapping operation is too high. You’ll pop back into the real world and ask someone who _does._

You shift back into life by shutting your eyes and willing it. There’s a change in temperature, a return to the sores and tiredness of your battle-worn body, and you’re back. Your vision is still colored, so Death’s souls transfered over.

"Jake," you say, as soon as you open your eyes. He's sitting on the worktable next to John, and jerks his head up towards you once he hears his name. "What would be the consequence of removing the Lord and Lady from their station?"

“I suppose no soul would be able to move on to the afterlife, necromantic soul binding would not work, and any attempt at resurrection would fail until Death was re-instated. They’d all just pile up in a waiting line,” he rattles off. He blinks at you. "Oh, fucking shitkickers, that's not a hypothetical, is it?"

You shake your head 'no.' Jake facepalms. At least it’s not _that_ bad. It’s not like the souls of the dead are lost or anything. Still, you’re not sure if literally removing resurrection from the world will be beneficial in the least.

The both of you glance at John, who is _very_ close to death. His skin is bleach white, his breath coming out in quiet wheezes, his eye half open and rolled back, chloroformed into unconsciousness. Jake pulled back the remnants of John's sleeve, exposing a wound that is cartoonish in its perfection. The interior of John's residual arm is so clean cut and flat and red that it looks like a slice of uncooked lunchmeat. Jake's altered your makeshift tourniquet to squeeze the blood out, and it's all thudding into a clay pot set below the worktable.

It is not worth it to try and heal him at this point. He is too far gone. You’re going to have to put Death back and, perhaps, try to leverage the fact you can take their soul(s) as a threat.

You hear the door to Jake's workspace slam open. "< _Okay! Got it!_ >" calls Vriska. It is unbelievably relieving to hear her voice, and you cannot believe you feel that way. Jake must have brought her back shortly after you shifted into Death.

As soon as she steps around the corner, you say, "I might have kidnapped Death and now we can't resurrect John. Or anyone. I have fucked with the basic foundations of the universe, here.”

"Awesome! That works in our favor!" says Vriska, who seems happy about the prospect. You want to hear how she twists your mess into a good thing. She has a couple papers tucked under her arm. "< _Anyway, while you were busy being dead, I studied the lay of the land. We've got some big fish to fry here, and I'm excited to serve 'em up!_ >"

She rolls out her papers on a clean worktable. You and Jake gather around her. They're large parchment maps, one of the northern sea, three of the palace, one of which is a detailed view of the exterior and the lower river chambers at the base of the great bridge.

She rattles off the details in Common, probably because you look and feel like shit and she’s taking pity on you. She points at the map of the sea. "So! First off! The important stuff. Jane, bless her bloodpusher, did something smart and hid the death of Miss Peixes by blaming her disappearance on kidnapping. So Alternia's still _hypothetically_ taking care of the city defense in the name of the absentee Auctor.”

Vriska pulls a pencil from her belt, and starts drawing little ships at sea. They're scribbly and adorable. "Morale is on the downswing for our Altnernian pals, since they've gotten word the Auctor is AWOL. They're letting some of The Renounced Empire's ships slip through because they're hesitant about allegiances. On top of that, about half the troll guards in the palace are loyal to the tyrian bloodline in power _only,_ and don't trust Ms. Crocker without the word of the Patrician, so they're being sloppy about interior defense too. Which is how you end up with a small raiding party sneaking through the lines and digging in English's corpses. So, that's more of an FYI, we're going to have to occasionally deal with groups of trolls trying to kidnap English. They're not going to try to go for Crocker until Alternia flips allegiances and Meenah can defeat the Patrician's guard."

She points at the map of the bridge that holds the entire palace over the river. It's more of an architecture plan, with a couple detailed shaded sketches showing the lowest part of the bridge, what holds the city-like structure over acres of rushing freshwater. The base consists of massive inverted U-shaped arches that bore along the brickwork like honeycombs. They are tall enough to fit the biggest galleon through, but only wide enough for one way traffic through any particular tunnel. Said galleon would probably scrape its finishing off to fit through. You've never been in a ship that passes through the palace bridge, but you've heard the tunnels are dank and dark and smelly.

She draws a circle around a large square hole cut into the side wall of one of the tunnels. There's a lot of those, it's for waste and water to get dumped into the river. "As far as I can figure, the trolls are climbing up through these things. Which is pretty gross, but whatever. If they want to be covered in shit, why the hell not. No skin off my back. We're here right now-" She points at a spot at the very peak of an arch. "-So once I'm done laying down order, the first thing we're going to want to do is get higher."

There's a moment of silence. There's the sudden absence of some white noise, and you realize John's stopped breathing. You feel nervous, your chest tight, and you fail to resist the urge to nervously bite at your thumbnail. Jake shuts his eyes, to sense for the dead.

"… Mmmm, not quite," he murmurs. He keeps his eyes shut.

Vriska ignores him. "I have no clue where Jane is, she pulled back as soon as John vaporized, and is taking over active control of defenses from some secret shadowy base. Left a message for her with the guard captain that John's okay, but I doubt she's going to trust me. Crocker's kind of a wildcard here. Is she going to attempt to attack Meenah? Help out Alternia as it stands? Play it safe, retreat, wait it out? Who knows. We've got our own priorities."

You think Jane's going to play it safe, if only due to the fact she thinks Meenah might get control of Alternia, and she doesn't want to completely nip diplomatic relations in the bud. You don't bring this up; you figure it doesn't matter in lieu of whatever Vriska's got planned. 

Jake says, with a slight smile, "And… Dead."

"< _Perfect,_ >" says Vriska, grinning. Her giddiness perturbs you. "Anyway. Our goals are essentially the same as they were before, except now we've got a time limit. 'Cuz as soon as Meenah arrives to announce the death of the Auctor? Bam! Half the palace turns against us, no allies, Crocker stays in the shadows, we're toast. So what do we have to do?"

You feel as though you have enough information to contribute. "Priority goes: 1. Stop Meenah from getting in the palace/informing anyone she can claim the throne. 2. Kill Kankri. 3. Bring back John. 4. Somehow reinstate the Auctor so that Alternia doesn't go apeshit, despite her currently living in my eye with no tyrian body to merge into."

Vriska waggles her eyebrows. "But there _is_ a tyrian body. There's exactly _one_ tyrian body."

Oh. That's tasty. You grin, a well-laid plan beginning to take formation in your mind, an eagerness to win welling in your chest. "I'm ready and willing to play some soul swap hockey. So we take care of #1 and #4 by killing Meenah. #3 comes after all of it. But #2 gets in the way of everything."

Vriska grin expands to new heights, and she looks downright maniacal. "Not really! We've got a slight advantage now, one we didn't have before."

"I don't follow."

"Think about it, idiot! What can Kankri control?"

The living. 

You think about it. You turn, and look at John's dead body, laying limp and bloody on the work table. Vriska starts to laugh.

She turns to Jake, who is in a state of pure zoned-out boredom at all this stratagem talk, and yells, "< _Catch me, ya milquetoast basement bitch!_ >"

Jake blinks at her, confused. "Huh? Okay, dearest."

Jake's penchant for completely inapplicable petnames never ceases to astound/appall you. Vriska's eyes swarm with her blue, and John's body tenses, sparks flying over his remaining limbs. At first you think she's trying to draw his soul back in, even though it wont work without Death to lend a hand. You realize she's doing the reverse.

Vriska extends her arms out, crackling all over with blue, and siphons her entire soul into John. Her empty body, breathing shallow, falls back, and Jake does good on his word, plucking her up into his arms. John's forehead is anointed with the Serket brood's symbol, and he blinks open his eye. Blue light swirls and steams from his socket, pooling over the white, and he sits up. 

It's kind of amazing how you can tell that it isn't John in there-- his grin is sharp and stretched instead of rounded and goofy, and his eyebrow has this weird downward tilt to it that you always assumed was a part of Vriska’s skeletal features but you guess she just contorts her face like that. Vriska flexes John's hand, watching lightning crackle along his fingers, and cackles. It's jarring, hearing harsh laughter in his voice.

"< _FUCK YEAH!_ >" Vriska bellows, with John's nasally intonation. She leaps to his feet, points his finger at the ground, and then draws an arc in the air. A massive chain of lightning cascades from his arm into the curve, and clings to the nearby shelving and ceiling. The flash of white light from the spell is overwhelming, the smell of hot electricity overbearing. One of Jake's shelves catches fire. "< _Ahahahahahahaha! John's body is *wasted* on him! This is awesome!_ >"

Jake gets this deadpan look in his eyes. He extends his arms, holding out Vriska's body like he's going to drop it onto the hard brick floor. "< _Gee, it'd sure be a shame if my things were ruined..._ >"

"< _Relax, English,_ >" says Vriska. She waves John's hand around and the lightning dissipates. She summons a tiny stormcloud, which rains a cute little downpour over the small fire on Jake's shelf. It's out in an instant. "< _Just going for a test run._ >"

You fold your arms and stare at John/Vriska. She spins around on his toes, getting a feel for his center of balance. Watching him move like gangly, swaggering Vriska is the most unnerving thing you've ever witnessed. "You think you can use the retcon powers like that?"

"That's the plan!" she chirps. "Let's try it out!"

Vriska glowers at something in the distance, then evaporates into a white shadow. Two Johns appear, on either side of the worktable. One of them has Vriska's symbol and necromancy sparkling all over him, but the other one is just plain old dead. The dead one flops to the ground, then dissipates into nothing. The John Vriska's possessing shimmers white. Vriska sighs.

"Huh," you observe. "Guess the powers are tied to John's soul. Makes sense if you think about it."

"… Well, dang," says Vriska. John's face contorts into a pouty frown. "There goes that idea."

Vriska undoes the makeshift tourniquet around John's arm, allowing what remains of his sleeve to cover the wound. She tosses the dagger and shredded cloth aside. "I wanted to have some army of dead Johns for backup, but I guess I'll have to manage with just the one. Kind of sucks I only get one arm to use magic with! Really puts a damper on his powers."

"I don't think you can win against Kankri with a body like that," you say, sighing. "This is stupid. I’d rather resurrect John. Any ideas on how to bargain with the Lord and Lady once I reinstate them?"

“No! Wait! No no no!” says Vriska, who rushes to you, rests John’s hand on your arm. She gives your bicep a squeeze, which is really weird. You hate how it _still_ gives you the crush-tingles. “If you want to use your soul stealing powers as a threat, you’re gonna want to make it seem like an _actual threat!_ If you cave-in in five minutes, they’re not going to take you seriously!”

Her point is pretty lame, but it is a point. You don’t have any better ideas on how to convince the Lord to both drop the pact with Meenah and allow John’s resurrection, so you might as well try it. You’ll just have to pull this whole scheme off quickly. A world without Death to guide others isn’t much of a world at all. At least on this side of the stratosphere, you’re pretty sure it’s past close-of-business hours for the Death Temples, so maybe no one will notice. 

You decide to vocalize the actual reason why Vriska wants to keep resurrection out of the picture. “You just want an excuse for John to stay dead so you can fuck around with his weather powers.”

“Actually,” she says, John’s face splitting into that dark, sharp grin of hers. “I’m more amped for the breath powers. I can take out a couple hundred people with those.”

“Still doesn’t change the fact it’ll be hard to emerge victorious with only one of him.”

Vriska shrugs, John's residual limb flopping around in an attempt to mirror his able arm. "Whatever. We'll just have to grow a bulge and call on the Patrician's forces for backup. Take permanent losses when Kankri blows 'em all to smithereens. John'll have to write condolence letters to their families but too bad, so sad."

"You know what?" you say, turning to Jake. "I have a better idea."

Jake's zoned out again, although at least he bothered to pull Vriska's body back in close to his chest. He snaps to attention when he sees you staring at him. "Hmm?"

"I know it won't be great for your 'collection,' but…" you preface. You take a breath, forcing yourself to put your trust in his talents. "How do you feel about being our one man, undead, canon fodder army."

Jake looks at you like you just suggested he murder someone. "Do I get to keep the casualties?"

"I... uh... sure."

Jake raises an eyebrow, thinking it over. His mouth tilts up into a smirk. "Well, why the hell not! I'm up for a bit of adventure."


	30. Shallow End

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Content warning for a flashing image! (It's very slow though, just two flashes a second)

You end up stuffing Vriska's body in one of the morgue drawers, in order to keep her safe and hidden. Jake lays her flat on her back, covers her with a sheet, and then slides the drawer shut.

You decide not to give Jake the same treatment, as Meenah's forces will specifically be looking for him in this basement. Instead, he's got to move with you.

"Do you think you can leave enough of your soul inside yourself to be able to walk?" you ask him.

He bites his lip, looking nervous. "Er... just pinch me if I get too invested. I should come roaring back to myself."

You hold him up by grabbing onto his shirt as he siphons his soul into about sixty full-bodied “dolls” in various places around the morgue, about 85% of which were human or troll at one point. The other 15% are dogs. The kind of fierce, old, hunting dogs that are trained to guard or take down large beasts. You knew he liked dogs, but you didn’t know he liked them enough to keep the probably-died-of-old-age ones around as mementos. That’s… almost sweet. The mishmash of jagged, barred, bloodstained teeth and cute bright colored buttons over their eyes throws you off, though. You have no idea what aesthetic he was going for.

You have to slap him across the face a couple times before he manages to find something of a balance. It’s not perfect, but you don’t have time to get Jake English to perfect. He can pseudo-walk on his own, shambling like a zombie, parts of his body twitching with command and necromancy, but either you or a nearby corpse will have to yank him up to his feet on occasion.

Before you leave the basement, you take a moment to pose as a team, because shit just got real.

Vriska immediately decides that she's not going to bother walking anywhere; she floats around with John's unique abilities. As opposed to how John flies around --bent over and looking endearingly goofy-- she postures him stick straight, so the tips of his boots brush the ground. It gives the impression he's some unearthly lich that's too good for barbaric mortal activities like walking.

You thought that Jake would slow you down immensely, but he’s able to move unnervingly fast. He moves as an amalgamated group, the corpses huddling together to use their whole bodies to push and pull each other forward, often bending in ways that hurt your spine to look at in order to crawl/shuffle/walk/shimmy faster. The dogs do their part by nudging and propping up the dolls that fall or trip. Jake blends into the group and you loose sight of him instantly. All the better he stays in the center, you suppose. If he goes down, your whole “army” is double-dead. 

You scout ahead on Vriska’s designated route to “higher,” which is the actual top of the bridge, where the tiered palace pseudo-city starts. She wants you to find out where Meenah is along the river. You run up a dim, stone spiral staircase, taking the steps three at a time, and nearly slam into two of John’s Clerks.

One of them is your old coworker Nick, but you don’t know who the other woman is. She flushes, awed at the sight of Sicknasty Awesome Adviser Strider. Nick’s chill, though.

“Hey, Strider,” he says, then jerks back. “Wait, _that’s_ what you were hiding under that blindfold?”

“You bet,” you say, deadpan. “It’s glow city all up in this bitch. Gotta cover it up so I’m not a constant walking nightlight. What are you two doing down here.”

He gestures back up the stairs. “Got orders to go fetch English in lieu of the weirdness going down with Alternia.”

“Taken care of,” you state. Nick appears suspicious, but doesn’t have it in him to question a higher-up. “Are you two aware of the positioning of the Renounced Empire’s ships along the river?”

“Uh, well,” says the woman, who has a mousy voice. “You’d better take a look.”

They guide you up the spiral staircase, through a long empty storeroom, then up a normal wood staircase, and you open a trapdoor into one of the small gardens on the south end of the palace bridge, towards the center-edge. The sun is almost completely below the horizon, only a dying dim orange and a full moon rising lighting your way. It’s chilly up here, too early in spring for the evenings to be bearable without a coat.

The garden and pathways and buildings are empty and unlit as you head towards the marble rail of the bridge. “Where is everyone,” you ask.

“Half the staff got evacuated to the human side of the city,” says the woman. “Just in case if there's going to be a New Empress who don't like us.”

You reach the edge of the bridge, and Nick points over it and to the left, towards the rushing river on the Alternian side of the palace. The wind screams through your hair as you lean over the marble rail, to see two of the Renounced Empire’s junk rigs anchored near the base of the bridge. And, barely visible from the angle you’re peering from, you see the butt of Meenah’s flagship poking out from one of the tunnels.

Too late. Meenah’s here to claim her throne.

“Fuck,” you hiss. 

From a ways back, you hear the sound of a trapdoor exploding off its hinges. You put your elbow on the rail, press your palm into your face, and let out an anguished sigh.

You hear John’s voice yell, “< _YESSSSSSSS!_ >” as Vriska launches herself towards you, nearly spinning out of control before she rights herself next to you on the rail, John’s toes gracing the marble. Vriska’s elated. Nick and the other clerk are _horrified._ You press your hands to your temples and slide them slowly down your cheeks. 

“< _Oh, look at that!_ >” says Vriska, making an obnoxious ‘peering’ motion with John’s able arm. “< _Guess Meenah’s here! And she left some poor defenseless ships out there???????? Wouldn’t it be a shame if someone were to… Blow them up????????_ >”

John’s arm crackles with lightning lit extra bright in the dark, and no, nope, you are not dealing with this. You wrap your arms around his calves and tug, and Vriska comically topples backwards over you. You remain upright.

“Go tell the Heir we’ve got it completely covered. Everything’s fine! Everything’s fine,” you spit out, towards the clerks. “And she can’t have Jake because we’re using him as canon fodder.”

The woman silently mouths the word, ‘what.’ Nick just follows orders, and tugs her away, apparently used to this kind of shit by now. They’re gone in a flash.

Vriska stands up, cracking John’s spine and rubbing his lower back. “< _Why’d you go and do that?_ >”

“The only thing we have going for us at this point is the element of surprise,” you hiss. “You really want to ruin that, huh. You really want to make a scene? Really?”

Vriska makes this “ugh” noise, and rolls her eye. “Whatever! It won’t matter for long. I betcha anything that Meenah is storming through the Alternian throne room and making, like, The Seven Dark Generals Of The Alternian Mountains swear blood oaths to her tyranny or some other egregious power fantasy bullshit. We’re eight seconds away from the full brunt of Alternia coming after us!”

You glower. You hope you’re not too late. You hope she’s right. “Then we make our way to the throne room as fast as possible.”

You hear the rustling of corpses as Jake squeezes himself through the trapdoor, his blob of undead shambling towards you and Vriska in long strides. They gather around you in loose formation, and you see Jake’s body propped up against a hefty looking lowblooded troll doll. You give one of the doggos near your knee a head scritch on instinct, then immediately regret it because you essentially just gave _Jake_ a head scritch.

“Sure,” says Vriska, John’s mouth splitting into a manic grin. “< _It’s going to be a hell of a ball taking down Alternia’s guards. Hope you’re ready._ >”

You are _not_ ready for Vriska to draw a spiral with John’s finger against the ground, watch it alight with blue, and then rocket all of you into the air with a massive gust of wind. She giggles the whole fucking flight, and you are thankful it’s near dark so that the entire remaining palace can’t see your terror-face as you’re sprung through the night sky in a not-so-elegant arc with sixty corpses to accompany you. The ground approaches fast, gravity cumulating in a scream from you when you realize Vriska isn’t going to cushion your fall with more wind magic. Instead, she bursts herself backwards with John’s flight abilities, hurling you, then a ragdoll Jake, back with her. The corpses land in a heap beneath you, and the three of you bounce safely into a cushy pile of cotton-stuffed-skin.

As you gather your dignity back together, and as Jake resumes his amalgamated form, you take a look at where Vriska dropped you. You’ve never been in the Alternian throne room, but you can assume you’re in the courtyard of it. In front of you is the entrance, grand white doors locked shut and covered in gold engravings of ancient seadwellers. Four walls enclose you, all of which consist of three stories of elegant balconies, each framed by a large round arch. Guards in tyrian —Feferi’s ex-guards— stand posted at the artfully constructed metal railings. There’s about a hundred of them in your immediate area. Probably amped up security for the new empress. They’ve all been suckerpunched by Vriska’s unorthodox entry tactic. No one is reacting. Most trolls have their mouths dropped open. 

Jake manages to get himself in order towards the back of the courtyard. The dogs open their mouths for a battle cry. Their howls sound like the elongated crunch of dead leaves. The guards on ground level ready their swords, and the ones on the upper balconies ready magic and arrows. Someone starts yelling at you about < _-the name of the New Empress!_ >”

“Take a deeeeeeeep breath, Dirk,” whispers Vriska, laughter in her voice. As an afterthought, she stage-whispers to a nearby corpse, “And you too, English.”

You take a couple, trying to saturate your lungs with air and calm your heart, try to recreate that quiet feeling of getting submerged in calm waters, then take one final breath and hold it. Vriska laughs, obnoxiously loud, and snaps with John's fingers. Just for show. The voices of the guards are silenced. You watch everyone in the area jerk their hands to their throats.

You’ve still got around ten seconds where you’re free target practice. Jake spreads out his blob of undeath into two even lines, acting as a body shield from the guards on ground floor. He stands between the two rows, eyes glowing, arms spread out, puppeteering everything. You hope he has enough air to last. Arrows and swords hit skin and cotton, sending stuffing flying every which way. The dogs act as calvary, jumping onto the guards who are more put together sans oxygen and violently ripping out their jugulars with artificially sharpened teeth. The top levels haphazardly fire arrows at the two of you, but they’re easy to dodge. Vriska lets an arrow pierce John in the fucking chest. She rips it out and glowers at it. Brown blood oozes from the tip.

You manage to last without your lungs feeling tight. Vriska drops the breath limiter once all the guards have fallen to the ground. You take a fresh, relaxing gulp of air. You hear Jake’s body take a couple wheezing gasps. A few dolls around you stumble, then fall to the tiled ground. No more arrows fire, none of the guards stir. Vriska did a hell of a job on the timing.

The doors to the throne room slam open, and Meenah and Kankri stride out, a few well-to-dos of the Alternian military accompanying them. You are indescribably relieved that Vriska’s instincts turned out to be correct; you would have been unbelievably boned if they weren’t here. Meenah’s got a fancy new cloak, and is holding a ceremonial trident covered in precious gemstones. Vriska immediately raises John’s pointer finger, yells, “< _Sniped!_ >” and fires off a chain lightning spell at the whole group.

Meenah is the only one who manages to put a hand on Kankri before the magic hits. The generals fall to the ground, spasming with electricity, while Meenah aims the ceremonial trident and proceeds to hurl it towards you. 

You don’t bother stopping its trajectory— it’s clearly going to miss both you and Vriska. It sails right between the two of you. You feel like an idiot when you realize she wasn't aiming for you at all.

Jake makes a strangled noise as the trident catches him across the chest. All the corpses drop to the ground as Jake is forced back into himself. His eyes clear in a flash of light, tears begin pouring down his face nigh instantaneously.

“Oh gods,” Jake sobs. His shaking hands pull out the trident with a wet sound, and let it clatter to the ground. He pats his abdomen like he’s trying to keep the blood in. “Oh, gods, help me, Dirk, Vriska, anyone, I need help, I-”

His next breath is so shaky he can’t manage another word, and he collapses to his knees, then to his stomach. He lies face down against the ground, a pool of blood growing underneath him. You bite your lip, hard. It’s okay, you can resurrect him. Your failure isn’t final. Probably.

“< _SNIPED!_ >” bellows Meenah. She whips out her undecorated trident from behind her back. “< _Okay, mind explaining how the shell you guys got here. I’m a bit con-fucking-founded at your escape from my ship._ >” 

You don’t bother with formalities. You swing your katana up and rush them, confident that your pseudo-immunity due to Roxy still holds. Vriska backs you up, floating midair and firing off reams of lightning towards Meenah and Kankri. Meenah’s forced to hug Kankri in order to avoid the magic, and it takes him a second to get his arms free to fire off biomancy at you. In the meantime, Vriska hurls a random doll at Kankri with John’s wind magic, and he ain’t immune to a big friendly corpse plushie. It bowls him over. Meenah manages to duck, stay on her feet.

You swing your katana at her head, but she blocks with her trident. You dive to the right, try to stab Kankri in the sternum as he’s getting up, but she aims a low stab to you and you’re forced to retreat. You roll backwards over your shoulder, swing at her ankles, and she hops up to dodge like fantasy!Skip-It.

Vriska flies behind Meenah, and Meenah jerks to face John’s looming body. She completely forgets about you as she swivels to aim a trident thrust at John, turning your back on you. Vriska tries to wink at you over Meenah’s shoulder, but it just looks like an awkward blink with John’s missing eye. You stand, and rush her.

Meenah impales John through the chest, slamming his body into the ground and embedding her trident into the tile below his back. You take a running leap, and behead Meenah with a single stroke, tyrian blood erupting like a geyser from her neck. She falls, over John’s legs. The Empress is dead. One down. One to go.

You turn towards Kankri to strike him down, but it’s too late. He’s on his feet, and with a forceful hand, crackling with red, he makes you drop your katana. Your body freezes, unable to move, unable to fight against unfeelable bonds. Biomancy sparkles all over you.

Your eyes snap to Vriska for help, but she’s pinned to the ground. She tries and fails to pull the trident out of her chest with one arm, but it’s jammed too deep into the tile. She groans, blows John’s bangs out of her eye.

Well, shoot first, ask questions later? You’re at least able to move your mouth. “< _Kankri,_ >” you say, willing your accent to not suck in this moment of crisis. It sucks even harder than usual. “< _Can we come to some type of agreement. I know it was cruel to keep you sheltered for so long, just because you had powers, but I think we can really reach a-_ >”

“< _Shut up!_ >” he snaps, and there’s a fire in his eyes you didn’t expect from him. “< _Do you know what it’s like to be put away for your life, because other people are afraid of you!? Because you’re quote-unquote weird!? Because you’re different than what the oppressive majority wants you to be!? Because people hate your ‘grating personality!?’ I just want to be myself, I want to do the things I desire, is that so hard to comprehend!? We can’t re-_ >”

A shot is fired. Blood spurts from Kankri’s ribs where the bullet exited. Kankri, shaking, stunned, turns to face his attacker in the back of the courtyard.

Jake hisses, angry he missed. With a desperate, determined accuracy, Jake drops the smoking gun to the ground, pulls another from his obi, smacks the barrel on the ground to load it, and fires again.

He aims true this time. The bullet slams itself straight through Kankri’s forehead, spraying gore and brains over the courtyard in a fireworks burst of red. The biomancy across your body skitters into nothing. Kankri falls to the ground in a lifeless heap.

There's a beat of stunned disbelief from all of you, including Jake. Vriska reacts first, exhaling loudly.

"< _Oh, Jake,_ >" says Vriska, John's face twisted into an expression of pure relief. "< _Jake, Jake, Jake, Jake-Jake-Jake-Jaaaaaaaake! I could kiss you, you glorious son of a bitch!_ >'

He makes a choking noise, and you can’t tell if it’s embarrassment or him trying to cough up blood. His voice is groggy. “I’ll take you up on that, Miss, when you’re not wearing my cousin’s skin.” 

Then he collapses.


	31. Deep End

The next thirty minutes pass by in a blur.

You fulcrum the trident out of John’s body with your katana, check on Jake’s wounds (to which he insists “I’ll last at least another hour”), try to figure out how you can possibly carry Jake and Meenah and Kankri with just you and a one armed John, figure you can’t, and lock Meenah and Kankri’s bodies in the throne room with a key one of the generals had on her person. The throne room is windowless, gaudy, and gold all over, so you figure they’ll be safe for a while.

As a contingency, you take Meenah’s soul. Since your eyes are full, and you don’t want her hanging out in your head anyway, you plonk the white orb in a bottle with a cork stopper. Jake had it shoved in his robe somewhere. 

You can’t carry Jake by yourself without aggravating his chest wound, and Vriska can’t carry him safely with one arm, so she ends up casting some sort of levitation spell on him and you’ve got to push him. He hangs limp, like invisible arms are holding him bridal style, and you wheel him around by shoving him in the shoulder blades. Vriska opens doors and gates for you, like a true gentleman.

You have to walk back to the human part of the palace, towards one of the clinics. The stroll is surprisingly uneventful. You take Jake to the closest care station, which is one the clerks use for mild scrapes. The healer on duty nearly starts a fire by his mouth dropping open when he sees the three of you, the cigar between his lips tumbling to the floor.

You leave Jake with the healer, go back to his warehouse with Vriska. She lays John down on a worktable, then siphons her soul back into her own body. You decide to be nice and open the drawer she’s stuffed in, as opposed to letting her suffer for a couple minutes in morgue hell. She climbs out, ripping the sheet off of herself, coughing and wheezing. “< _Ugh! Gross! I smell like dead people!_ >”

You sit on the table, near John’s waist, and Vriska coaches you on how to make a good threat. “< _Remember! You gotta say you’re crazy! Threaten to go totally off the rails and destroy the base tenants of the universe!_ >” You figure you won’t be quite as believable as Vriska when you do this, considering you’re not batshit insane, but you’ll make an attempt.

You phase into the void with a deep breath, and turn to see the Lord and Feferi drinking Cosmopolitans in the infinite blackness. Feferi’s still lounging in her pink beach chair. The glass is comically undersized in Death’s claw. He tips it back into his gaping, dangling, skeletal jaw, and it all spatters down to the dark floor in a pathetic waterfall.

“Hey there, Soulwalker!” says Feferi, flicking down her heart shaped sunglasses to peer at you. “How’re things?”

“I’ve returned to shake my fist menacingly at Death for trying to perma-kill John. Have you learned your lesson. Can I return you to your godly throne now.”

“You tried to _what!?_ ” yells Feferi, who leans over her beach chair and gives Death a backhanded slap on the wrist. “And here I thought you were a funny guy!”

The Lord appears to be sheepish about this, because the head rotates to the Lady. The Lady flicks her eyes to the empty cosmo glass, gives it a sad look, then flashes them to you. “ADMITTEDLY, THAT WAS QUITE RUDE OF MY BROTHER TO THREATEN TO TAKE THE OBJECT OF YOUR AFFECTIONS AWAY FROM YOU! YOU’LL HAVE TO CONVINCE HIM TO TAKE BACK HIS WORDS. ALTHOUGH IF IT IS ANY CONSOLATION, I’M ON YOUR SIDE FOR THIS BATTLE, AND WILL FIGHT MY BROTHER IF NEEDED! GETTING RIPPED FROM OUR STATION IS REALLY PILING UP THE SOULS IN THE QUEUE.”

The head rotates to the Lord once more, who shifts to loom over you. “SO. STRIDER. THANKS FOR THIS LITTLE. ‘VACATION.’ IT HAS BEEN NICE TO TAKE A BREAK FROM MY STRENUOUS WORK SCHEDULE. SO GO AHEAD. TRY TO CONVINCE ME. TO BRING BACK THIS DUMB FUCKHEAD.”

“Isn’t it enough that I demonstrated I can kidnap you at will.”

“NO. YOU WILL HAVE TO OFFER SOMETHING... MORE.”

“A’ight,” you say, and rip open the buttons of your fly in one smooth tug.

“INDECENT SLUT!” screams Death, moving his claws over his eyes. Feferi finds this hilarious, flopping back and giggling. You like Feferi. “HOW DARE YOU TRY TO EXPOSE THE SACRED FORM OF MASCULINITY. HOW DARE YOU TRY TO DEFILE ITS HOLY SECRETS. YOU SCUM. SLIME BAG. CORN HOLE.”

Guess that means he’s got some kind of repression thing. You sigh, disappointed, and button your fly up again. You probably should have gotten a clue from how Jake phrased it. He used the word ‘aesthetically.’ “So, what can I offer you to make it worth your while to return to your job and give John back to me in fighting form. A strip show? A few well lit shots of me standing in pseudo-sexual flexing poses? Extremely accurate, pinpoint shaded drawings of muscular men oiled up and-”

“YES.”

“What?”

“THAT LAST ONE.”

“Oh, yeah, sure, can do,” you say, scratching your head. Maybe you can leverage this some more. “I’ll send you one a week for two months. Strider subscription special. As long as you: don't snipe John’s soul, give him back his retcon powers, and… uh… resurrect him and fully heal his body once I return to life? Even the post-corpse trident wounds.”

“FUCK YEAH. DEAL. A DEAL THAT I. CLEARLY GOT THE BETTER END OF. HOPE YOU LIKE FEELING. EXPLOITED.”

“Yeah, love it. Can’t get enough of it. Woof.” You cannot believe how easy that was. You cannot believe that seriously worked out for you. You can’t believe you don’t even have to swipe one of Jake’s resurrection scrolls when you get back. You also don’t have to find Jane or another healer to patch up John, apparently, so that’s nice. You seriously can’t believe that worked out for you. Things are looking up.

Before you walk Death back to… Death, you let Feferi know you’ve got another body available for her. She grins, all manic with her six thousand sharp shark teeth, and thanks you for the help.

Guiding a giant floating skeleton back to their realm in a pitch black featureless world is like playing this really strange game of Hot and Cold. “Here?” “NO? UM. MAYBE A LITTLE FURTHER NORTH?” “Here?” “OKAY, TOO FAR.” But you eventually get it. You phase back to life once Death is in their spot, already busy with fulfilling the resurrection orders and organizing the perma-dead souls that piled up in their absence.

You open your eyes to the basement warehouse. Vriska’s no longer around. You twist, to stare at John, whose body jerks like it got struck by lightning. Three glowing disks, one red, one green, and one white, emerge from his chest, and fly over his wounds. The red and green disks zoom along the puncture holes from the trident and the arrow, leaving fresh white skin viewable between the tears in the fabric. The colored disks then vanish beneath his eyepatch. The white one fastens itself to the flat of his residual limb, then pulls out along his side, forming a brand new, shiny, clean, healthy left arm. Its task finished, it flies back into John’s chest. He opens his eye, a gasp jolting through him, and he sits up in a rush. He starts coughing and wheezing, smacking his chest to try and get his breath back.

“Hey sunshine,” you say, reaching around his shoulders to undo his eyepatch. You pull it away from his face. Two blue eyes blink up at you. “Welcome back.”

“I… uh…” he coughs once more. He reaches under his glasses to rub the heel of his hand against his left eye. “Okay, my eye is back. That’s cool. Um. How long was I out?”

“Dunno. Couple hours,” you say.

He rubs his eye again. Like he's checking if it's there, if he can see. When he's dropped his arm to his side, he cracks the knuckles on his left hand by flexing it. Then he begins itching his left forearm. “So what’s the plan? Did you and Vriska figure out how we’re going to take down Meenah?”

You give him a brief summary of everything that went down past his death, as well as your plans for Feferi. He listens, at first a bit surprised the two of you pulled it off without him. The further into your story you get, the more muted John becomes. He just stops reacting to what you’re saying. Keeps itching his left arm.

His facial expressions are nonexistent, considering the sheer ridiculousness of your antics. You thought he’d be giggling, or commentating on everything, but he seems pretty out of it. It could possibly be a normal sort of frazzled, a period of adjustment needed after getting resurrected, but something about him rubs you the wrong way.

He continuously scratches his forearm, his leather glove pulling and dragging against the torn fabric and new skin. He’s making eye contact with you, but it’s a zoned out kind of look. Listening but not _really_ listening.

"John," you say. "Are you alright."

He snaps to attention once you comment on it, and it's gone. Hidden away, replaced by a big smile. "Oh, yeah, I'm fine!"

"You don't look fine," you say. You want to try and push him, this time.

"I… um." He puts his hand to his chest and rubs there. "I don’t… feel great? My heart is pounding, ha ha. I think I'm a little stressed out at all these things that happened. Especially since I wasn’t around for them. There’s just… a lot. It’s kind of jarring! Not to worry though, I'll be back to normal in a sec!"

"Yeah, a lot of that was pretty fucking taxing," You give his arm an encouraging squeeze. "Let's find someplace quiet and talk it over."

"No! No," he says, a bit panicked. "At least let me make sure Feferi is all right, first?"

You know he's trying to dodge you, but you can't argue with him wanting to confirm his 'bestie' is going to live. You feel like it would stress him out more if you force him to rest right now. After, though, you are making sure he talks it out with you. Perhaps as you fall asleep together? That's a fuckin' wonderful thought.

"At the very least, could you stop trying to scratch your forearm off?"

He looks down at his left arm, blinking at it like he's surprised it's there. "Huh? Am I scratching it?"

"Yeah. Incessantly," you say. You wiggle your fingers at him, then extend your hand towards him, palm up. "If you need something to occupy you, I can provide filthy temptations."

John hesitates. He reaches out, and takes your offered hand with his right. You lace your fingers with his. "Dirk," he mutters, as you swing your arm down to appropriate hand holding levels. "Dirk, I… Weren't you listening to me earlier? I- I don't want to mess with your feelings any more."

"But here you are, holding hands with me anyway," you say, and you give him a squeeze. "Let's go bring back Feferi, then hash it all out." 

John does something strange here. He gives you this pained look, like you're saying goodbye to him before leaving on a long trip, then leans over to kiss you gently on the forehead. It feels like he's blessing you. From his lips, you feel John's skin burning up, in a sickly way. 

His left hand is still free as you walk together, which he'll occasionally use to rub his left eye. He's not going at it too hard, so you don't worry about it. You figure he'll adjust after getting some sleep.

It’s late, the moon full in the night sky, so the palace is desolate on your walk with him. Therefore, it’s easy to spot Jake making his way back to the warehouse on the other side of a small garden. You’re content to let him go on his merry way, but John calls out to him.

“Hey, Jake!” he says, dropping your hand. Sigh. “Could you give me a scroll so I can resurrect Feferi right away?”

Jake crosses over to you, frowning. “No, I only have one scroll left… Can’t you hold your horses and play a round of chess with me, for once?”

“I’m sorry Jake, I didn't mean that as a request," says John, his mouth splitting into a wide grin. "That was an order."

Jake gives John a wide-eyed, gaping look. You’re too flabbergasted by John actually ordering someone around to stick up for Jake. “Okay,” he stammers out, pulling his last scroll from his obi. “Um. I'll just come with then. Since I have to go back up there to collect my bounty anyway.”

John lets the word 'bounty' fly right past him, and doesn't ask about it. You figure he probably does that a lot with Jake.

The bodies are still in place when you arrive at the courtyard. Jake drifts off and starts turning a couple over, analyzing their features and whatnot. You guide John towards the main doors, unlock them. 

Kankri’s mess of a corpse is still there, but Meenah’s is missing. Head and everything. Her blood still stains the floor. 

You frown, wondering how that could have happened with the doors still locked. There’s no sign of entry. Oh, right. You’d bet your hat that Roxy voided into here and whisked her away.

This doesn’t perturb you. You have Meenah’s soul, which is what Roxy wants, so she’s going to come looking for you once she realizes the body’s empty. But John doesn’t feel the same.

He presses his hand to his heart, rubs his chest with nervous motions, and his eyes hollow out. It’s one of those far-off PTSD gazes, the kind you’ve seen on your coworkers sometimes. “Where is she?” he asks, with a calm, toneless voice.

“Roxy probably took her,” you say, frowning. You reach out for his free hand, and while he lets you take it, he doesn’t grab back. “It’s fine, dude. I’ve got Meenah’s soul.”

“Jeez, of course it can’t go right. It’s always just one thing after another, huh?” he mutters. “And I can’t ever do anything to stop all this bad shit from happening to my friends.”

“Look, I’m not sure how useful it is to try and weigh the philosophical ends and means of your actions _right now,_ ” you say, giving his hand a hopefully-comforting squeeze. “Let’s go find Roxy to stop more bad shit from happening, alright?”

John stares at you, totally blank, and you’re fretting over what to do when Vriska tromps into the throne room. She immediately hollers, “< _Heyyyyyyyy! Up and at ‘em, huh? In fighting shape, huh!?_ >” and smacks John _hard_ in the center of the back, in an intense ‘good luck team!’ kind of way. John jerks forward, throws your hand away, and jolts out of his thousand yard stare. He straightens up, totally fine, and turns to grin at Vriska.

“You bet!” he chirps. “Hey, you wouldn’t have any idea where Roxy would have gone, would you?”

“< _As a matter of fact, I do! It’s why I dropped by,_ >” she says, and gestures in the general direction of the river. “< _I’m 88% certain she retreated back to Meenah’s flagship! So we’re going to fly down there and check it out!_ >”

John salutes her, winking. “I’m your guy!” 

Vriska forces Jake to tag along, to which he gives this defeated, tired, sigh. John doesn’t show any more indications of… breaking, after Vriska showed up. You’re thankful she arrived. You hope he’ll hold together until you can get him somewhere to rest. 

John launches the four of you off the bridge, gusts of air directing you to the flagship parked just under one of the tunnels. Unusually, you stumble on the landing, John cutting off his wind spell just a hair too early. Jake doesn’t even recover, he falls flat on his face. You get a “Ugh, sorry, I don’t know what’s wrong with me… Having a hard time breathing even for some reason,” from John.

You stand on the deck of the junk rig, in complete shadow. The night and the shelter of the tunnel would probably render you in complete blackness, but there’s a couple small lanterns lit, resting precariously on the ridiculously unsafe, knee-high guardrail lining the deck. There aren’t any other ships surrounding you, contrary to what you spied from the bridge earlier.

The roar of the dark river beneath you is ear-splittingly loud. The speed of the current between the tunnels is insane, rapid from the break of the bridge and the melted ice waters of spring. The water looks nearly black in the night and shadow, cut only by flashes of foamy white waves.

On first glance, you don’t see anyone. You wonder if Roxy told the crew to escape on the other boats. Then a shadow shifts along the starboard wall of the cabin, and out walks Roxy, clutching Meenah’s head in her arms. Her shoulders are sagged forward, defeated, upset.

"Guess you guys won, huh?" she says, just barely loud enough to carry over the noise of the river.

“< _Guess we did!_ >” says Vriska, walking towards Roxy and rubbing her hands together, like she’s excited to steal Meenah’s body away. “< _And hoooooooo boy, girlie, did you ever pick the wrong team! It’s curtains for you, I-_ >”

You shove Vriska out of the way, interrupting her. “Roxy, you know I hate to do this to you. But we’re going to drop Feferi’s soul in Meenah’s body.”

Roxy winces, knowing she's lost the fight. "Can I at least have her soul? Maybe I can put her in a different body. Uh… like a rustblood or something."

You're about to tell her that you don't think that would be a good idea, but John answers first. "Of course!"

Even Roxy looks shocked at that turn of events. Vriska gives John this ‘what the fuck, dude,’ kind of shrug, but John isn’t looking at her. He wanders off towards port, to peer over the rail at the rushing water.

You don’t have it in you to argue against both John and your sympathy for Roxy. You dig the bottle containing Meenah’s soul out of your belt pocket. "Sorry I killed your girlfrond," you say, offering it to Roxy.

"It's okay, you did it for your boyfrond," she says, taking it. Her voice is shaky, it is clearly Not Okay. You take the head from her, pull Feferi’s soul from your eye, and pop it into Meenah’s mouth. Roxy gestures towards the rest of Meenah’s body, hidden in shadow. You set the head down on the cadaver. You call for Jake, who begrudgingly trods over, readying the resurrection scroll. He begins reading it off once he’s near the corpse, the words vanishing off the paper as he recites them.

“Hey, John,” calls Roxy, her voice shaky. “I am truly, truly sorry for stabbing you in the back. I really did mean it.”

“It’s fine! No need to apologize,” he calls back, cheerily. He spins around on his heel to wave towards Roxy. He’s grinning. “It’s all my fault anyway.”

The dim light from the lanterns is making his face look gaunt, almost ghastly. Vriska’s the closest one to him, and she’s folding her arms and frowning, waiting for something. Jake finishes reading the scroll, a white disk popping out of Peixes, doing its work of reattaching her head to her body.

“I… um… okay?” says Roxy, confused. “I really don’t see how you’re at fault, buddy.”

“Oh, I guess it’s like, things just keep happening? They just keep happening. And they’re all sort of my fault because I forced people to do things I wanted,” he says, gesturing at all of you. “I mean, look how many people I almost killed with this whole Renounced Empire thing! Look how many of my friends got hurt! Just because I’m so irresponsible and stupid. I’m a pretty worthless Patrician.”

Those statements are so morbid, rambling, and uncharacteristically pessimistic that it blindsides you over the back of the head. Vriska has her lip raised in a judgmental scowl. Jake is pointedly staring in the opposite direction. “What the fuck?” you hear Roxy mumble, who you think might be the only one not clued in on John’s… issues.

He tilts his head to the side, laughs a little. “And the worst part is… Everything I do is totally meaningless! I pull all these strings on my friends but I can't save them or protect them or anything! Everybody just ends up dying a lot or hurting others or doing horrible things for me.” 

You watch his face finally crack, his smile collapsing into a look of utter terror. His eyes are wide, his voice is shaking, he runs his hands through his hair over and over. “And- and that doesn’t even begin to describe all the horrible things I've done to my family! Jade and Jake and Jane and Dad and- and Mom! The things I did to my mom! And gods, what am I going to do to my kids!? What am I going to do to all of you!? I've forced you all to stay at my side and I don't even know why!”

John’s guilty conscience finally rears its ugly head. Everything he’s suppressed is apparently deciding to erupt at this inopportune moment. This isn’t fair. It isn’t fair that he’s breaking in two. Everything should have worked out. You won, you defeated Meenah, you sorted things out with Death, everything should be fine. You don’t want him to crack, not now. Not when you can’t have him alone and try to hold him together.

"Nobody's being forced," you say. You start to walk towards him, slowly, gently. "We all want to be here with you. We’re your friends."

Yeah, no shit!" he spits out. He starts gesturing wildly, staring up at the top of the tunnel. "It's because I got to know you so I could make things comfortable for all of you! I let Feferi give me advice and I turn a blind eye to Jake's weird hobbies and I make sure Roxy gets exactly what she wants and I bend to Vriska but not too much and I give Dirk a big fucking problematic project to work on! But don't any of you remember? It was hard to get all of you to move to the positions I wanted you in in the first place!"

You, certainly, did not want to move to the palace originally. He had to work at opening you up, as well. You can glean that Jake and Roxy felt the same at the time they were uprooted (perhaps Roxy turned it into a double-crossing spy scenario _after_ she was hired on). You're not really sure about Feferi, you wonder if she was coaxed to take down the Condesce originally. None of this throws you off though, you already knew he was doing that to his friends. You _are_ surprised it's in his conscious mind, however.

Behind you, you hear Feferi sit up. New bodies take a while to adjust to. She probably wont be able to walk for a couple minutes.

"< _Oh my gooooooooddess,_ >" Vriska whines. "< _What are you even talking about!? I've literally never *not* wanted to be here._ >"

John's face contorts into this mean, mocking expression. "< _Oh, yeah, sure, Ms. 'I'm going to marry Egbert so that I can puppet the Patrician and be some kind of dumb regent uber Queen.' Do you know how hard it was to change your attitude when you've been after that since we were five sweeps old!?_ >"

Vriska's caught off-guard at that one, taking a step back. You're not sure how to calm him down. You keep inching towards him. Jake looks extremely uncomfortable, like he wants to flee back to his basement. Feferi's just starting to figure out facial expressions. Roxy's got a rather concerned, patient look about her.

"I dunno, that doesn't make any sense," she says, just barely loud enough to carry over the roar of the river. "If you're only doing nice shit for us 'cuz you think it's like some dumb bartering system, like if you don’t care about us at all and just want us to do nice stuff for you, then why are you freakin' out so much?"

"Don't you get it!? I don't know if I even care about any of you! What if I only want you all around because I'm too stupid to solve problems on my own!?" he screams, not actually answering her question. He smacks his hand to his chest and clutches at the leather. "What if there's nothing there! What if I'm empty!"

"No way, dude," she says, folding her arms. "You were defs all hurt and wounded when I betrayed you. 

"It's not genuine! I don't know what _is_ genuine!" he yells. "I just told you! Why won't any of you listen!?"

His arms are shaking like he's seizing. He's tilted forward a bit at the waist, mouth open, trying to wheeze in air. His face is contorted into an absolute mess, eyes clamped shut, wetness squeezed from between his lids like his body's had enough of all this guilt and suppression and failure, like he’s cracking at the seams.

"< _Yeah, yeah, so what,_ >" says Vriska, sauntering towards him. "< _You're a sad piece of trash who's allllllll empty inside from the horrible things he’s done. That's why I'm here to-_ >"

John jerks his hand towards Vriska, and a gust of wind hurtles from his splayed fingers and bowls her over. She lands on her back with a loud thud.

"Don't touch me!" he screams. He flings his pointer finger towards you, as though to cast a spell. You flinch, stop in your tracks, but there's no lightning or wind. "Don't come any closer!"

John gapes at something imaginary in the distance, then staggers backward, lurching forward at the waist. He clutches at his chest and stomach. His hood billows elegantly out of the way as he proceeds to vomit out the meager contents of his stomach, and then some, splattering the wooden deck. Stuff stops emerging, but he doesn't stop heaving, strands of yellow falling from his mouth, lungs rasping and choking.

"I’m okay," he coughs out, between dry heaves. His shaking hand wipes a blob of stomach acid and mucus away from his mouth and flings it to the ground. He lurches again, choking on nothing. "I’m okay. I’m fine. Give me- give me ten seconds."

Fuck no. You’ve got to wrangle him back to you, lightning or wind be dammed. You start marching towards him.

“Don’t touch me!” he yells. “I just need- I just need ten seconds!”

He takes a couple staggering steps backwards, still bent at the waist, like he’s bowing out of a room. You don’t find this odd; you think he’s trying to get away from the vomit, or you. But Feferi screams, “Dirk! DIRK!” and you realize he’s getting way too fucking close to the edge of the ship.

His leg thuds against the low rail. He missteps. Trips backwards.

You are running for him as soon as you see his body tilt. You know for an objective fucking fact that he is not going to try to catch himself, that due to confusion or exhaustion or panic or sheer suicidal gusto he is unable to do so. He will flip over the boat and get pulled into the river and never be found.

He topples, and you lunge for him. Your arms swipe against air as you try and fail to grapple his waist. He falls, backwards, off the ship, and you do not hesitate for one moment. 

You throw yourself after him. 

You catch a handful of his long sleeve just before you hit the surface. You are pulled into dark waters, completely submersed in the undertow, your equilibrium and sense of direction fucked up within an instant. You realize a couple things right away. A. You cannot swim against such a strong current. B. It's fucking freezing. C. This is the dumbest thing you have ever done in your life and you are going to die.

This is not just you being a dour pessimist. You cannot get out of this. You are going to die. You will drown or get hit by river debris or freeze to death. And there isn't a great chance your body will be found, either. If you cross your fingers real hard, maybe you’ll wash up on some poor fisherman’s dock before you bloat too bad.

It is very hard to figure out where your limbs are in relation to yourself when you're spinning out of control in pitch blackness. But you still have a clenched fist full of fabric, and you lash out through the force of water and claw your fingers into his arm with your other hand. The speed in which you are able to complete this motion tells you that he is positioned in front of you in relation to the direction of the current, which means you have been _very lucky_ and landed with your feet facing south. You kick out and your knee slams into either his torso or hips and you wrap your legs around him because you are seriously not concerned with swimming right now.

It's been mere moments underwater, but your lungs already feel like they're going to burst. You've never wanted to breathe more in your life. You know it's just the cold, that the deep freeze plunging into your spine and nerves is tricking you into trying to swallow the river, and you clamp your free hand tight over your nose and mouth to try and trick your body into obeying.

There’s no surface light, no nothing, no clue on which way to turn, just black flora-filled water that tastes like dead fish. The death pendulum is swinging heavily towards drowning, so that's cool, you guess. You've never drowned before. It's remarkably painful. Your lungs are iron hot, your head is light, you're struggling to keep it all in because you know inhaling water is going to be even worse.

You feel something latch onto your waist, and pull you downwards. Disorientation reels in your stomach when you realize you’re actually being pulled to the _surface--_ you were just upside down. You scramble to get you and John upright, mysterious hands helping you turn.

You are pulled into moonlight and chilling air with a rush, and you nearly pass out from the lurching gasp your lungs force you to take. You automatically try to take another one, but mentally, you know inducing hyperventilation probably isn't the greatest idea. You force your breaths to come slow, resist the urge to shiver, and look at who saved you. She's facing you, grabbing onto your belt, and kicking back against the current.

"Augh!" Feferi screams, an odd bubbly sound with her mouth half submerged in roaring water. "< _Why are you both so heavy!? Are you searious with this glubbin' shit tier body!? I can't believe Meenah was such a fuckin’ beta!_ >"

The look on your face is probably a shambling mix of confusion, fear of death, panicked concern for John, and pure adoration that Feferi apparently lifts every fucking day to get sweet gains. Feferi flushes at your expression, then yells, “< _Hold on to me!_ >”

You manage to get John pulled up to your side, an arm wrapped around his waist. He’s either dead or conked the fuck out, as far as you can tell. His eyes are shut, his glasses are gone, his mouth is parted, and water is flowing freely between his lips every time the rapids lap over you.

You get an arm around Feferi’s waist, and wedge your forearm into the pink corset Meenah had on for extra precaution. She starts to swim back up the river. You’ve been carried surprisingly far south, despite being underwater for maybe seven seconds. You can barely make out the lights on the boat under the tunnel. It’s probably faster to try and swim against the roaring current than to try and reach the far-away shores of the wide river, and Feferi knows it.

You try to help her out, but your legs might as well be fucking toothpicks in comparison to Feferi's sleek, evolutionarily prime seadweller body. She propels you towards the boat like a dolphin, dipping underwater and flipping her legs together to move as powerfully as a draft horse. You press your chest to her back and attempt to keep your head above water.

It seems like a fucking year in a half before you're able to reach the boat. You're fine for about… a minute. When the initial adrenaline surge of "I'm going to die" wears off, the comfort of the _possibility_ of safety gives your brain some unwanted relief. Your attentions are manhandled and forced to focus on how fucking cold it is.

It’s nearly unbearable. It’s like having gallons of ice water poured on your head without any means to step away. Your face aches. Everything aches. You feel like all your blood is getting siphoned out of you with each wave of water. Your muscles feel like they’re turning into brittle wood.

You focus on your arm around John, instead of how far away the lights of the boat remain. His outfit doesn’t allow you to lash yourself to him like you’re doing with Feferi, in case your muscles give out. You cannot let go of him. No matter how hard you shake.

It is ages until you feel Feferi pin you against the hull of the ship. She treads water against the roaring current; you feel her arm replace yours around John. He’s safe with her. You extend an arm up towards the deck. You're not looking at who grabs you, but there's only one person up there with the strength to haul you around.

Jake heaves you out of the water, one hand death gripped around your arm and another clutching the back of your collar. He uses leverage and momentum to flip you over the rail, which means you go careening into the deck, landing on your stomach and splashing water everywhere. Water pours from the holes in your eyes as you lurch forward on your knees, gasping for air. You vaguely hear Jake spit out a panicked, "Jimminy fucking Candlenights, I'm sorry!" but you're too busy leaking and coughing out of every orifice to respond.

You didn't think it was possible to be any colder, but as soon as the nighttime spring air hits you, you feel it down to your bones. You resist the beginnings of hyperventilation, force yourself to breathe even, despite the cold water pouring from your mouth. Every muscle in you decides it's a great time to clamp up, to become rigid and useless, and it is only through sheer strength of will that you force your limbs to keep moving. Just another minute. Just another minute, and then you can collapse. You feel like you're made of splintering frozen wood as you heft yourself up and lean over the rail to help Jake pull John's limp body up. 

You don’t know if he could do it by himself. The wet clothes and leather add another hundred pounds to John's already heavy form. Feferi angles John so Jake can grab the leather back of his cuirass, near the collar, and he makes an audible noise of effort lifting his cousin just a few inches out of the water. You grab the fabric of John's sleeve as soon as you're able to reach. It is a momentous effort to pull him over the rail, and you and Jake fall on your asses once you flip John onto the deck, his stupid-huge body bowling over the both of you. Feferi, apparently agile as hell, boulders up the side of the ship by herself once she sees John is safe. 

Jake is able to scramble up, to get John off him. You are not.

With hands shaking from both tiredness and chill, you use the very last of your strength to drag John's torso towards you. Freezing water pours from his wet clothes and hair and skin as you gather him in your arms. You sit up, John's body splayed between your spread legs, and clutch his shoulders tight to yours. His head hangs limp against you, relaxed, you feel him breathe like he's sleeping. Alive, huh? With him safe in your embrace, you let yourself succumb to weakness.

You've never felt colder in your entire fucking life. Every fraction of you enters a state of muscle spasm that you don't know how to control. Your jaw locks shut. You start wheezing around your teeth, desperate for air; you feel like you’re suffocating. You press your cheek to his and shiver around him.

You rock back and forth a bit, like you're soothing him. You think you're crying, but you can never tell due to how your eyes are structured. You don't blink, letting the warm black ooze down your wet cheeks. You can’t hear the river, you can’t hear the voices of your friends, you can only hear the sound of John's soft breaths in your ear.

"Hey. Strider." Vriska’s voice cuts through it all, so uncharacteristically gentle it jerks you into listening. "You're both gonna get sick if you stay like that. Get up."

You feel her long nails tap the back of your neck. You cannot be bothered to talk through the breaths you're struggling to take.

"C’mon. Up and at ‘em," she says, her voice nearly melodic, like a lullaby. She claps at you, quiet, but urgent. When you don’t react, she gives your shoulder a gentle shake, like she’s trying to wake you up. "You survive the attempted coup of the century and you end up falling prey to a case of the shivers? Lame!"

You hug John tighter, trying to feel any warmth in his skin. He’s as cold as you. Vriska shakes you harder. “Dirk… Get up. I… c’mon… Dirk… Get up… Don’t leave me hanging…”

You grit your teeth. You shut your eyes and press your forehead to John's soaked hair. You take a moment to gather yourself together. It is the hardest thing to let him go. It is even harder to force yourself to move.

You take her offered hand, and you pull yourself up.


	32. Lost in the Loop

You issue orders to your friends through chattering teeth.

You have Vriska find Jane, because you want her to check if there's any internal physical damage to John. You have Roxy teleport you, Jake, and Feferi to your room-- where John cannot hide behind foyers and magic and mazes. As secondary benefits, you get to warm up in your own territory, and you also get to keep the fact the Patrician had an… “episode” on the down low. 

You do not want a _single_ maidservant or guard getting wind of this. No rumors allowed. You have Her Ardent Fucking Auctoritas sneak off to get fresh pajamas for John, as she's got access to the foyer. You ask Jake to dry and redress him. It’s something that you would much rather do yourself, but you know your limits. Fumbling around with a floppy body twice as heavy as you in your bathroom while struggling with mild hypothermia is well past them. Jake does this in five minutes flat, anyway.

You don't know what to do with Roxy. But she makes her own decision. She dotes on you, gives you towels, helps you dress, treats you like you're made of eggshells. You drip water all over your bedroom loft as you move around and change. She kindly teleports your clothes to one of the laundry rooms for you. She makes you tea, whatever was stocked in your kitchen. Chamomile tea with lots of honey and milk. You drink it while sitting on the edge of your bed, with Roxy sitting next to you. You're wearing a lounging robe and pajamas and have a thick wool blanket wrapped over your shoulders. You clutch your cold hands around the warm mug of tea. You cannot stop shivering.

Jake carries John to your bed, tucks him in without even asking if that’s okay with you. Which, well, it is. You can’t think of a better way to warm him up. Jake leaves immediately afterwards. You at least have it in you to thank him for the help. And… give him a goodbye hug, too. The big twist: it’s not even awkward.

Jane shows up alone. She nearly bursts into tears when she sees you and Feferi and John, rushing both you and the Auctor for a relieved hug. She checks out John, who did, in fact, have some sort of brain damage going on— either from inhaling water or getting yanked around so much. She heals him with a press of her fingers to his forehead. He stirs, but doesn’t wake. 

You move to the couch on the lower floor of your apartment and try to talk her and Feferi through what to do tomorrow, when the world begins to move on. Feferi’s going to make some speeches on the Alternian side of things, do a hell of a lot of cleanup, and Jane will act in John’s absence. Feferi, in her own clothes now, works at undoing Meenah’s long braids. When her massive sea-dweller mane is back to how she likes it, you realize that Meenah’s and Feferi’s bodies looked _exactly the same._ That’s convenient.

They leave, once you’ve settled as many politico todos as you can, and Roxy snuggles up next to you on the couch. The wool blanket drapes over the both of you. She’s a much needed source of heat.

"Hey Dirk,” she mutters, her head resting on your shoulder. “I think I'll… I’ll tell John when I put Meenah's soul somewhere. Just 'cuz I want some of his trust back. She's defs going to get arrested. But maybe it's somewhere I can visit her? I don't know… She's going to be so pissed… We're probably broken up…"

She sighs. You open your arms for a closer hug, and she takes it, nestling against you beneath the blanket. She hasn't gotten clean after the battle-- she still smells like fishy river water. "I was thinking about it, on that ship by my lonesome. And I realized I was being really shellfish- uh- selfish. Like, fuck romance, fuck Roxy's stupid ideas: I got, like, possibly two kids to take care of. They gotta come first. And even though they would have had a cool-ass troll mom, I think it would have been… very cruel to take away their dad, and raise 'em up without them getting to know him and his family. And _my_ family too! You'd be so mad at me if I just fucked off to Alternia, heh. You'd probably never talk to me or my babies again. So yeah, side picked. Better late then never, right?"

"Better late then never," you repeat, and press a gentle kiss to her temple. 

"Also, I'll get some sweet perks being whatever the equivalent of Queen Mother is and that's gonna be hella ballin’," she says, with a voice that's strained, but cheerful. "Uh… do you think he’ll be alright?"

"I don’t know," you say, because you don’t. "But I’m going to try and get him back on his feet. I hope I don’t fuck him up further."

"You won’t. I’ve got all sorts of faith in you," she says. She pulls back, grasping your shoulders, and frowns at you. "Goddess, you're chilly. Here I am, keepin’ you awake. Go to bed!"

"I don't want to assume intimacy with John when there might not be any."

"Just don't be a creeper! You could be two no homo bromos nappin' in bed together! Ain't nothin' wrong with that!"

You feel your mouth pull into a smirk. "Whatever you say, Roxy."

She leaves after that, giving you one last goodbye hug and popping into a void portal. You sit on your couch, alone, and feel another shiver wrack your body. You meant what you said about the fear of assuming intimacy, but at the same time, you can't think of a better place to warm up. You need a big pile of blankets and another source of heat, stat. And probably some sleep, too.

A knock on the door prevents you from going after any of that. Vriska barges in without waiting for your approval, in a clean, casual outfit, and plonks down next to you on the couch without a word. She’s got this falsified confidence aura about her, her feet already kicked up on the table, her arms crossed behind her head, grinning at you like _you’re_ the one who’s supposed to start whatever inane conversation she wants to have. You’re too tired and too cold to spit A-game banter, and she knows it. You try to guess what she’s after.

"Hey, Vriska," you say, rubbing your hands against your arms in an attempt to warm them up. "If you're going to try and hatefuck John, get him up with a challenge or whatever, I _will_ have to try and delve into the new and unknown form of romance dubbed ‘auspice.’"

That's a bluff. You know everything there is to know about auspices. You've been reading about them in your free time. You're certain you're a bona fide expert on it.

She blows a raspberry at you. “< _We don’t need an auspice! I’m just here to talk!_ >”

“Talk,” you repeat, incredulously. “About what.”

“< _I dunno! Whatever!_ >” she says, looking a little agitated. She jerks her arm out from behind her head to scratch at her horn. “< _Like, stuff about John!? Me and John!? Whatever!_ >”

Even with your emotionally inept brain processor, it is _transparent_ that she wants to talk with someone about his breakdown. You wonder if she’s hating on herself, thinking she’s made the wrong moves on him or something. Since you’re not certain on how to start, and because you don’t think Vriska would take a question such as ‘how do you feel?’ kindly, you decide to start with gathering more info.

"Alright. I'm not clear on your relationship history with him," you say. All you know about the JohnVris situation is that they were in an arranged marriage since they were kids, and at an unspecified time period mere friendship switched to a kismesis, which you think was recent. "How long have you been… involved."

Vriska jerks to sit up straight, plasters on some false-bravado smile. "< _You mean how long have we been banging!?_ >"

"Not really what I was asking, but fuck it. Sure. I'm nosy as hell. How long have you been smangin' it."

Her face falls, she looks pointedly at the coffee table. She looks like she regrets suggesting you ask the question. "< _Six and a half,_ >" she says, in a flat voice.

"Six and a half years is longer than I thought."

"No! Since we were six and a half _sweeps,_ you dummy," she hisses, angry. 

You’re glad you already drank all your tea, because you’d be spitting it out right now. TM-fucking-I. The chill on your body permeates down to your soul. Thirteen’s too young, that kind of shit leaves scars. They’ve had knives embedded in each other for longer than you could have imagined, sixteen years’ worth.

Vriska laughs, forced. "< _Oh, don't give me that look! I barely remember it anyway. I was just dropping that little factoid for emphasis._ >"

She stares down at her knees, wringing her hands in her lap. It's jarring, the display of vulnerability. "< _It's always been kind of an off again on again thing. We didn’t so much as hug until one and a half sweeps later, when we were going at it on the bathroom counter during his eighth sweep wriggling day party. And we decided that like, we knew the higher powers had probably designated us to get human arranged-married, so why not, right? It was all fun and games! All the time! Until we offed his mom and he cut off the engagement in a hot second._ >" 

She hikes her knees up to her chest, and rests her forehead on them, curling herself up into a ball. "< _… I still have the ring._ >"

You have no idea how the fuck to empathize with her. You have no idea why the hell she's telling you this. Is she jealous of you? Trying to tell you John is complex dude? Upset about her childhood friend? Did his breakdown throw her off, and you’ve been designated the Feelings Receptionist for some ineffable reason, and she’s just letting it all out? 

No matter the reason, you understand that showing weakness is a huge fucking deal for her. You don’t know how to show sympathy to her. Touching? Is touching a thing? You put a tentative hand on her back. She does not try to bite it off.

"< _I thought I pitied him for a long time. You should have seen him like, ten years ago, he was absolutely *pathetic,*_ >" she says, into her knees. "< _Sometimes I thought I was pale for him too. Sometimes he just felt like a plain old friend. And sometimes I just want to hurl him off a bridge and fuck his face in! Like right now! Ugh. This absolute moron._ > Also, god, Strider, you're an ice cube."

"< _Sorry,_ >" you say, rubbing her back. You ignore the bizarro world fact that you're apparently having a feelings jam with _Vriska Serket_ and try to make your voice sound steady. " < _So. Bit lost with the quadrant talk here. Sounds like you… like him?_ >"

"I don't _just_ like him…  < _He's *literally* the only person I've ever met who's never let me down. Nearly ten sweeps of knowing each other! And not once. Always something new and fun and exciting with John, right? Always ready to pull off some sweet pranks with me! Always rises to the challenge! Always does what I want except when he decides to do something better,_ >" she says, and rubs her eyes against her knees. You can't tell if she's crying. "I'm a shitty kismesis. 'Cuz while it's fun to fight and stuff, deep down I want to see him kick ass, I want to see him win! And I’m not the best tool to make him a winner right now."

She straightens up, uncurling from her ball, and you draw your hand back. She doesn't look at you, just stares off towards your entryway. Her eyes are wet, but no tear-stains. "I know I'm just this- this short term fixer upper for him. Smack him around a bit and give him something to do and he'll magically suppress the bigger picture. But I don't want to be a coping mechanism anymore."

You understand why she came here. It’s a very brave thing, to admit when you have to let go.

"< _Yeah,_ >" you say. "< _For what it matters, I think you're worth much more._ >"

“Wish I could be someone else right now. But I can't provide stupid saccharine human tenderness and careful listening,” she mutters. “That's more of a… you thing.”

"< _Am I doing a good job of it?_ >"

She nods, too quickly. Her mouth crumples into a weepy frown, and she cannot talk anymore. Tears slipping from the sides of her eyes, she curls into your open arms for the tenderest bro hug you can manage. She cries silently, unmoving against your chest.

This is fine for about two minutes, until the weirdness of hugging Vriska settles in. This is… unfortunate. She smells like saltwater and feels like a leather padded skeleton. Vriska has a similar breakthrough, because she stops crying, pulls away from you, and grimaces. “Ugh,” she says. “Let’s never touch each other again, thanks.”

“< _Yeah, agreed,_ >” you say. You let her recover, dry her eyes. She does this quick, puts all her sadness away in seconds. She takes a deep breath before speaking again.

"If I put my trust in the wrong place… if you hurt him, make it worse… if you break him completely…" She leans in _way_ too close. She presses her hands to your cheeks and pushes in, so you make a stupid kissy face. She rasps at you, eyes wide. "I will eviscerate you thinkpan to frond nubs, and I will make the pain unbearable, long, and inescapable, as I drain every ounce of your hemofluid from your vile and useless husk of a body."

Your voice is all distorted from your lips pressed together. "< _Cool. I'll probably want to die if I hurt him, anyway. Two birds with one stone._ >"

"Great! Glad we agree." She lets go of your face, and gives your cheek an encouraging pat. "Good luck, Strider! Make it better."

You nod, solemnly. You follow her to the entryway, watch her open the door to your suite. She hesitates in the doorway, her back to you. She says, barely loud enough for you to hear, "Don't let me down."

She shuts it behind her before you are able to answer. You wait a minute, in case she changes her mind and comes back, then lock the door with your key. You hide the key beneath the couch, in a space between the frame and the cushions. 

You turn off the lantern in your sitting room, then climb up your spiral staircase to your bedroom loft. You’ve got a big skylight set into the slanted roof above your bed, and you don’t keep it covered. The bright moonlight shining through is enough to see by. 

You discard your robe, throw the wool blanket over your down comforter, and climb in next to John. The sheets are cold against your skin. Your bed is large, so you aren’t forced to get up in his business. It’d feel rude without his consent, anyway.

He inhales, sharp, as the mattress bends beneath your weight. He rolls over onto his stomach, head turned towards you. You woke him.

You wonder what he'll act like. You wonder if he'll pretend to sleep, or pretend he's fine, or refuse to get out of bed. You wonder what he'll do.

His eyes are barely open, shimmering in the moonlight. His voice is groggy. "I- where am I?" he croaks.

"My room," you say, then predict his next question. "You haven't been asleep for very long."

He lifts himself up against his forearms, an action that is done so slowly and shakily that it looks like he's got some great weight on his back. He grimaces, stares down at the pillow. He shuts his eyes, rubs his face. "I… how’d I get… Jeez, I gotta get up… I have so much stuff to do… I probably have to… I don't know… make some kind of announcement that the Renounced Empire's been creamed…"

You give him A Look. "John. It's like, midnight."

He jerks, like his body is trying to kick itself awake. "So… I _did_ sleep a long time."

You slide down next to him, lay your head on the pillow. You have a feeling that there isn't a lot you can say to deter him from trying to get up, so you try for, "Stay with me. Ten more minutes wont hurt."

He blinks, bleary-eyed. Unable to hold himself up any longer, he flops back down against the bed. He rotates onto his side, lids already shutting, and reaches out for you. You glide into his hold. He pushes his hands up under your shirt, to splay his fingers along your back. You shift so his head rests against your arm and your other hand holds him 'round the waist. He's cold. "Wake me up in ten minutes, okay?" he stammers. 

You don't answer. He presses sleepy kisses to your face, never quite finding your mouth. You don't help him out, you like the sweetness of it too much. When he gives up and falls against the pillow, you kiss him goodnight on the lips. He is already unconscious by the time you do so.

You settle against him, careful not to move and wake him. You memorize the feeling of his skin against your palm, of his soft breath on your shoulder. After a while, you fade into sleep.

You dream of dying in the river with him, morbidly romanticizing it. His arms wrapped around you, your lungs engorged with water and weeds, your corpses adrift and never found, your bones resting with his on the riverbed. In a different scene, you dream of making love to him in dark waters. You rut against him in a shallow pool, enclosed in a tall cave glowing with moonlight. You dream of John in ecstasy, throwing his head back against a smooth rock as you grind your body to his, hips slick underwater.

You wake up when he moves you, pushing you away from him and rolling you onto your back. You feel his hands press down against your relaxed palms. It's still dark. Your muscles are so tired. Your body is worn down and heavy. You can't be bothered to open your eyes. You lace your fingers with his in sleepy bliss. In your woozy mind, you wonder if he's having a dream about you again. You'd be down for him to ravish you. You're so willing and loose you'd let him do whatever his subconscious desires. 

"You didn't wake me up," he murmurs. 

You flutter your eyes open. He's looking down at you, very much awake. You're too bleary to read his expression.

"Don't get up," you mutter. "Go back to sleep."

"I have stuff to do," he whispers, and kisses your forehead. His voice is meandering, like his thoughts are all jumbled. "I should go clean up… Maybe afterwards, I can leave another me in bed with you. But like you told me before, things are more efficient if I clean up at the spawn point. Can I use your bathroom?"

You nod, and let him go. You shut your eyes, nearly fall back asleep, but fuck, you can't let yourself. John is awake. You cannot allow him to leave your apartment.

You wave your hand, summon your technomancy dock, look at the time. Four fifteen. Moonlight still shimmers along your bedspread. You see the crack of light from your small alchemical lantern in your bathroom, hear water run through the tap as John goes through his morning routine.

You sit up, rub your eyes, will yourself into wakefulness. You force your head to start working, kick the gears into action. If he leaves your apartment, he's going to break in two, you're certain of it. You've got to somehow convince him to stay with you, to talk with you, to figure his shit out before he goes back out there into the cruel world. And you cannot pussyfoot around this one. You have to accomplish this at _all costs._

After you sit in a woozy state of zoned-out for a while, you hear his voice through the wall. "Hey, do you have a straight razor I could borrow?"

You have one to keep your sideburns even. "Under the washstand," you call back, your voice groggy.

Your eyes open wide. You get this horrendous thought, that he's not going to use it for shaving. It isn't a particularly likely outcome, considering the fact you'd fucking insta-resurrect or heal him, but it makes your heart pound with horror nonetheless. You finally wake the fuck up. Yeah, you're supervising this. You get out of bed, suppress a shiver at the comparably cold air, and knock on the bathroom door.

"Can I come in?" you ask.

"Mhmm!"

You open the door to dim, candle-like light. The alchemic lantern is lit on the washbasin stand, to your left. Steam from the bath and the clean smell of him overtakes you. 

He's just shaving. Standing over the basin he filled with warm water from the tap, ducking to peer into a mirror too short for him, edging the razor carefully along his upper lip. He's naked, no glasses, wet hair slicked out of his way, skin glistening from the warm steam. You don’t have it in you to ogle him. You shut the door behind you.

"Making judicious use of my towels, I see," you say.

"Sorry for offending your moral decency, I wasn’t expecting company! I hope you don’t mind the view," he says, finishing off the area under his lower lip. He's fairly speedy at it, he's got over half his face done already. His neck still has lather on it. He dips the razor in the basin, swishes it around, returns it to a spot underneath his sideburn. He glides it up, against the grain.

"Ah, dang," he says, slipping and nicking his jawline. A sizable drop of blood flows down his chin. He sets the razor down to press his thumb to the cut.

"John," you say, concerned. "Would you hold your hand out for me, please."

John lifts an eyebrow, but does what you ask. He raises his hand out towards you, palm down. There's an intense tremor rattling him from his fingers to his wrist, one impossible to hide. John realizes what you were looking for a little too late. He sighs, rolls his eyes, picks up the razor again. "I guess I've got the shakes. I probably need something to eat."

"Probably. But hey. I have a steady hand, and a +5 to one-handed swords," you say, wiggling your fingers at him. "Let me finish you off."

He winks at you. "You can finish off my one handed sword any day."

“Zero out of five hats. That was way too obvious.”

You have him sit down on the wide rim of your bathtub, carry the basin of water over to place next to him. You take the razor from him, lean over him, get a good grip on the blade, and line it up on the lathered side. You don’t personally need to shave anything other than your sideburns, but you know how hair works and have enough control to painlessly peel the top layer of skin off someone with your katana if needed, so you feel you’re qualified. You’re steady as you glide the razor along his jaw, the edges of his cheek, careful in the dim light, and you craft his face into a precision smooth marble statue. John smiles at you whenever you move to wash off the blade, but it’s tired. It’s damn tired.

You tilt his chin up with your free hand. You press the blade against the base of his neck. His lips part. You watch him swallow in shadow. “Hold real still for me, sunshine.”

He hums in agreement. You make your touch light as you glide it up the center line of his throat. When you arrive at his chin without incident, he exhales, shivers a little. You wash off the lather in the basin, then angle the blade over, trace the razor along the next line of skin. He shuts his eyes, tight. Bites his lip. You think, for a moment, that these physical reactions are because he’s struggling with trusting you.

Then it occurs to you that it might just… feel good. You glance down, but he appears unaroused. However, his fingers are pressing into the bathtub edge the way you would imagine him clutching bedsheets.

"Stay with me today," you whisper, washing off the blade after the next upwards flick. "Let's spend all day sleeping and doing some weird sex shit. I’ve got some baller ideas, if you’re game."

"I'll leave one of me for you to play with, Dirk," he half-whispers, half-whines. "He'll be the real one."

"I don't want you to split," you say, starting on the next stroke. You wait until you’ve glided up to his chin to continue. "I want all of you."

He still shivers after you finish every motion. “Why? It doesn’t mater what happens to the fake mes.”

“They aren’t fake, John. They’re you,” you say. Another, up the very edge of his neck. You press your fingers to his jaw to hold him still. “You kill yourself nearly every day. And I think you know that, somewhere. So I want you to rest with me without having to worry about yourself. Without having to tire yourself out about what you’re doing, or what you’re planning, or the gambits you’re pulling without your knowledge.”

You finish the last stroke, clean the razor off and dry it. You’ve gotten most of the lather, only excess dollops that fell off the razor remaining here and there. John blinks up at you, innocently.

“Cold water,” he says.

“What?”

“I have to wash with cold water so I don’t break out,” he says, pointing at the tap over your bathtub. 

And just like that, the tension between you is lost.

“Stop dodging me,” you say, trying not to get mad.

“I’m not dodging you! Face care is important.”

“You’re going to have to talk to me. You can’t suppress what happened on the shi-”

“Later!” he scoffs, rolling his eyes. “Whatever. Get out of here, I have to pee.”

“You do _not-_ ”

He raises his voice, folds his arms. “Well, I have to take a shit then! Bye!”

You decide that this is probably not the best conversation to have when you’re holding a knife and he’s completely naked, so you begrudgingly retreat for this round. You take the razor with you when you leave. 

You sit on the edge of your bed, rest your elbows on your knees, plant your face in your hands, and wait. You try to think of what to do, to get him to stay. You can only think of one thing: you force him to rest by taking his soul away. You force him into your head and you have a Man To Man feelings jam whether he wants it or not. The thought of doing so makes you feel slimy, so you decide it’s best to try and talk him down first.

He looks chipper when he exits your bathroom, his pajamas and glasses donned again. His hair is dry and styled, he must have cast a wind spell on it. He walks down the stairs of your loft, smiling to himself.

“I think I should probably go now,” he says, as you follow him. He steps into your sitting area, strides towards the door. “Since it’s too early for anyone to see the walk of shame back to my room. The real me will be right back once I grab some clothes!”

"No, you need something to eat. I don’t want you collapsing," you say. "You're shaking."

"Oh! Yeah! Right. I forgot," he says, giggling. He spins around on his heel. "I hope you don't mind if I raid your kitchen."

"Go for it."

Your kitchen is small, a counter and an oven and an iron water pump facing each other, with room for one person to walk between it all. You don’t have a light in here, so he creates a little light bubble with a flick of his wrist. It’s warbled and misshapen, but it works fine when he sets it on the counter. John heads for the tiny basket of eggs next to the far wall. You think he’s going to try to make an omelet or some other egg breakfast dish.

John proceeds to pluck an egg from the basket, cracks it on the flat of the counter, tilts his head back, and just fucking crushes the raw yolk into his mouth with one hand.

It is the weirdest thing you've ever watched him do, out of a stunning plethora of weird things you've witnessed. "What the fuck."

He swallows it down, tosses the shell into the sink, then reaches for another egg. You lash out and catch his wrist, stopping him.

"Hold on, I don't think you heard me. Let me enunciate," you say. "What the _fuck._ "

He shrugs, yanks his hand away from you. “I should eat something.”

"That's all fine and dandy, but might I suggest something a little more, I don't know, food-like? Sit down. I'll make you something."

He frowns. "You've already done so much for me. I don't want you to do anything else."

"John, that's stupid. I would enjoy making something for you. I'd love to make you a goddamn omelet."

"You say that, but you're totally one of those self-sacrificing types," he huffs, putting a hand on his hip. "I'd feel super guilty taking advantage of you like that."

You cannot believe this. You feel anger building up in you. "It's a fucking omelet. It takes five minutes. There's no advantage gained any way you look at it."

He rolls his eyes, totally dismissive. “Ugh, whatever! I don’t need anything to eat anyway. I’m fine.”

You _hate_ those words. You would give anything to remove that phrase from the Common lexicon. You would sacrifice your left arm to the god of language if it meant he never said those two words again. You tense everywhere, your hands form into fists without conscious urging. Your voice raises and you grit your teeth and you fucking lose it. 

“You’re not fine!” you scream. “You’re not fine, John!” 

John is flabbergasted by your emotion. He takes a slight step back, his back hits the wall before he says, "I… huh?"

You gesture wildly, uncontrolled. “You nearly killed yourself! I’m not going let you suppress that after you almost took me with you! Tell me, explain to me, in whatever parallel world you live in, how trying to off yourself is remotely fucking fine!”

“I… I didn’t, I slipped and fell. I-”

You feel your void pour down your face as you neglect to blink. Your voice is a sob. “You owe me this! Please! Just this!”

Blue eyes flicker all over your face, trying to read you, his mouth parted in shock. He doesn’t know what to do.

"Okay," he says, quiet, nervous. "What do I owe you?"

"You owe it to me to stay!"

He inhales, sharp. He forces his shoulders to relax, to step away from the wall.

"I know… I know I scared you real bad. I'm sorry. I freaked out a little. It won’t happen again,” he says, breathing deep. He calms himself, figures out a path to take. “But… and you'll probably like this, because it's all logical and whatever… but a big crisis just happened. People need a friendly face to say it's all okay, we won, blah blah. And if you don't want me to duplicate myself, it makes it hard to prioritize who to spend time with. I mean, I know it’s shitty, but sometimes I only get two choices and they both kind of suck but I have to choose anyway! And I hope it doesn't hurt you when I say I would pick the well being of thousands over the well being of you."

"But where do you fit in, John?" you choke out, desperate. "What about _your_ wellbeing?"

He frowns, looking at you like you just asked a rhetorical question. Like he thinks he's just some feelingless tuft of air pushing blocks around.

"I'm willing to compromise. You want two hours in the afternoon to give a speech or whatever? Fine," you say. You wipe away your tears with the heel of your hand. "But today, I will not let you work from four in the fucking morning until after dinner. You've got friends to help you. All the staff loves you, they won't mind if you need to take a break. And you've got Vriska and Feferi and Jane. They'll-"

A gust of wind flares around him, tousles his hair. He clenches his fists at his sides, glowers at you. "Jane can't do my job!" he snaps. "None of them can!"

"Yeah, you know what? You're right!" you yell, exasperated. "You're custom built to be a leader! You're literally bred for it! So shouldn't it be all the more important to keep yourself healthy?"

His voice raises to match yours. "I _am_ healthy! I'm fine!"

The frustration that fills you is excruciating. You feel the familiar urge to fight, to beat him into submission so you can teach him a lesson, and to resist it is like climbing a mountain. “How can you say that to me!? How can you say that to me when I’ve felt what’s in your soul!?”

John ignores the question. He folds his eyebrows down, goes straightbacked and solemn, and speaks in his coldest, most commanding voice. “Dirk. If you don’t let me leave, I’m firing you.”

You don't move.

“I am not just your Adviser. I am your friend,” you say. “And I am not leaving you.”

He rolls his eyes, drops the Patrician persona instantly when he realizes that doesn’t frighten you any longer. "And you think _I'm_ the one who's suppressing stuff!? I thought I said I don't know if that friendship's real!"

"And I thought I said you can have more than one fucking motive for having a friendship," you say, your anger ebbing. You have to calm yourself. He doesn't understand who he is, you've got to remember that. He doesn't process things in the same way that you do. "Shit's allowed to be complicated. And I _genuinely_ think you care about your friends and your family. Some of your actions don't make logical sense otherwise. Like, feel free to prove me wrong on that, but I don't think you can. You can't bring forward any evidence besides, 'I don't understand my feelings.'"

You reach out and gently touch the exposed area at his very loose neckline. His skin is a little chilly. Your voice comes out as a sentimental, choked-up whisper as you trace his collarbone. “Yeah, I think you _do_ have a motive for getting cozy with me. You know I love projects. I love to work on people, try to fix and mend and improve. And, god, you’re a goldmine. And you know that. You know you need help and you know I'm perfect for the job. But as usual, you don't know the ‘why’ or the ‘how’ behind it. You just know what you want. You know you lay in bed sometimes and it affects your job. You know the things you're juggling are starting to slip through your hands. You know that you want someone to keep you together. So here I am. Come to kick over all the blocks you stacked.”

John frowns down at you, breathing heavy, but makes no attempt to move your hand. You continue on. "I think I have an idea on how to help you: you've got to come to terms with the way you are. Learning how to define _why_ you choose certain paths is… really important, John. Because if you don't begin to understand yourself, you're going to die. And that’s not hypothetical. You are going to die."

He shuts his eyes, gently, and exhales. His anger rolls away like the tide. He presses on your knuckles, so your hand lays flat to his chest, over his heart. He gives it a quick squeeze, then lets go. Under your palm, his soul feels weak and more willing than ever. You feel the tiredness, the hurt, just how fucking done he is. You feel the long road ahead, the one he _has_ to traverse. 

As you feel him out, John makes this little 'ah' noise, like you're stroking his thighs. He rests his arms on your shoulders, apparently afraid of falling over.

"Don't worry John," you say. "I'll catch you."

"… You always do," he murmurs.

You are relieved to note that when you pull his soul away, his body _does not_ vanish. This is the only John there is. You catch him on his fall forward, under the arms. His body sags against you, and you pop his soul into your eye.

You drag his limp body to your bedroom. The staircase proves to be a little challenging, but you manage. You tuck him into your bed, take off his glasses and set them aside, then crawl in next to him.

Looking at his face, fully relaxed and breathing slow like he's sleeping, you ache for him with such an intense tenderness you're not entirely sure what to do with yourself. You press a soft kiss to the corner of his eye. You smooth his hair back, kiss his forehead. You take a couple seconds to look down at him, rest your hand against his cheek, brush his skin with your thumb, allow yourself a moment of pure, unfiltered, unironic fondness.

You nestle next to him. You lay your head against the pillow, and shut your eyes. You focus on the blackness behind your lids, and will yourself to slip into your void. The warmth from the bed is replaced with unremarkable room temperature nothingness, the feel of yourself laying down transitioning to standing, your eyes opening to pure darkness.

You hear whistling. A jaunty sailors tune. You turn towards him.

You focus on the love you feel, and ignore the sinking feeling in your heart that screams at you, over and over, that you're just going to make it worse.


	33. Dirk Makes It Better

John’s whistling is perfectly on key. He's laying down next to you, in his pajamas, arms crossed behind his head, looking up at a cloudy sky that extends every which way into the infinite horizon line. Crepuscular rays cut through massive clouds painted grayish green and dull purple, shining and shifting down onto pure darkness. 

An even plane of black water replaces the ground beneath your bare feet. It feels solid beneath you, warm but leaving no lingering wetness if you lift your soles up. You can see ripples highlighted in white. They cascade along the surface whenever you shift. Despite being water-like, there is no reflection of the vast cloud-horizon surrounding you. It’s a matte black.

"This is kind of cool," hums John. "I can make whatever I want here."

This is fucking nuts. The level of control John has in your head, especially in comparison to the little control _you_ possess says a whole lot. Maybe bringing him here wasn’t a great idea after all.

But at least, here he cannot run, nor can he go to Death without you willing it so.

“Hey, I’m pretty sure I can change things on you, too,” he says, glancing up and giving you a perfect smile.

“Try it, babe. Give me some sweet new threads.”

There’s no gesture, no spells cast. The clothes replace your pajamas with barely a shift in weight. He giggles at your look.

This one isn't just borderline military sexpot, this crosses over into full fetish gear territory. You're wearing one of those aesthetic harnesses, thick black ribbons lashed around you from your neck to your hips, soft velvety corset cinched over it at your waist. You've also got on tight black pants, fly tastefully unbuttoned to show how the harness lies flush over your pelvis and hips. You have no idea if you look hot, but you feel pretty good in it. The thought of him tightening the laces on your back one by one is fuckin’ _choice._

"Nice," you say, looking down at yourself. "Perfect time to bring up my most recent hypotheses on your sexual interests. I rescind my theory that you're into powerplays and propose you're simply _really_ into public exhibition and super confident about what you want, which of course tends towards dominance. Like demanding blowjobs in the backroom, sex in the carriage, probably fucking the maids, that kind of thing. Dressing me up like this is either a-"

"Okay! Normal outfit it is!" stammers John, clearly flustered, and the tightness of your sweet look is replaced by plain clothing. Black pants, black shirt, black boots, tailored to you. Mildly disappointing, although you suppose it'd be inappropriate to have an emotionally intimate talk in erotic haberdasheries. Stay focused, Dirk.

You sit down next to him. He hasn’t transitioned out of his pajamas— loose drawstring pants and shirt that exposes his decolletage. He stares at the shifting pre-stormy sky, a faint smile on his lips. He's no longer shaky, or pale, or jittery. Thanks, featureless void, for giving him a go-getter soul-body.

You're not sure how to start with this. If you’re trying to go the honest approach, perhaps you should begin by vocalizing how freaked out you are by all this. Then maybe shoot the shit about related topics until you can segue into the vast landscape of his mental state. This is kind of a daunting, vague task ahead of you. At least you don't have a time limit. Hopefully it wont take too long, it'd suck if your real-life body got bedsores.

He continues to stare at the sky. Light ebbs and flows over his face, alternating between a soft glowing halo and a bit of a threatening shadow.

“Hey John,” you say. “This might sound idiotic, but I want to get it out of the way. I’m afraid I’m going to hurt you. That I’m going to break your mind or some shit.”

"You’re really over exaggerating your abilities," he chuckles, lightly. "Besides, there's nothing left of me to break. Hey, can I lay on your lap?"

You lean back a little, shift so you're on your knees with your legs kicked out to the side, so he can rest his head on your thighs. You're flattered by this, and wonder if he's got a motive for asking, but you decide that it's not a question worth chasing at the moment. He looks content, with his head in your lap, smiling up at you.

"Just as an FYI, I'm not going to let you leave until you sort your shit out," you say, running your hands through his hair. All smooth, no tangles, it feels like an indulgence. "I'm sorry for forcing you to talk through things with me. I just don't want you to run away this time."

"Nah, I get it," he says. "I don't want to die."

You think through a couple possible responses and decide that being blunt might be the best way forward. "The feel of your soul says otherwise."

"Does it? Well, I guess it would have to if you took me here, ha ha. But I dunno, are you sure your powers are working?" He reaches up and boops you on the nose. You raise an eyebrow at him and he giggles, briefly, before resuming his more serious attitude. "I don't think I want to die! Imagining Jane having to carry my burden and Roxy without any help and Vriska going on a rampage without me to hold her back… Everything would fall apart if I up and vanished one day. What would you do if I perma-died, Dirk?"

"Depends on the circumstances. I'd probably be very upset for a long while. But if I felt responsible for your death, I'd throw myself away," you say. John frowns, and he opens his mouth to argue, but you don't want to hear it. You continue on. "Speaking of Vriska, I had an emotionally exposing talk with her."

He blinks, surprised. "Oh! Really?"

"Yeah, we hugged and everything. It was adorable," you say, deadpan. "Anyway, I found out you've been together for… about sixteen years, although the sexual aspect came and went during that period of time. So I have to ask: you truly never loved her, huh?"

John shuts his eyes, tight. He takes a deep breath, like he’s mentally preparing himself, forcing himself to be honest for you. He sits up, scoots away so he’s not touching you, and you let him. He doesn’t turn to face you. 

"I… I thought I was in love with her, for a while. It took a stupid long time, but I figured out that someone being precious to you is different than wanting to be with them in a romantic way. Not that I don't want to touch her and stuff sometimes, she's a cutie. And she knows what I like behind closed doors or whatever, which I kind of have to keep on lock down due to the whole Patrician thing! I don't want a big scandal."

You resist the urge to wheeze out 'I can take on that burden' in a skeevy voice. Instead you place a hand on his back, kindly. "She cares about you an awful lot."

"I know…" he says, hugging his knees tight to his chest. "I wish I could have changed for her, or that she could have changed for me, and maybe the marriage thing would have worked out. But, oh my gosh, can you even picture that? Vriska being some docile perfect little wifey wife. No way. I like her plain crazy! Things are never boring with her, it is always fun seeing what she has up her sleeve."

There’s a pregnant pause, and you wait for John to break it. He rests his forehead against his knees, much like how Vriska curled herself up into a ball on your couch earlier. Sunshine shimmers on his back. Ripples of white cascade out against the inky black, underneath where he sits. His voice is quiet.

"But I also kind of… hate her? And maybe not in a sexy troll way, I don’t know. She pushes me to do bad stuff a lot. Tries to use me to get to the top of the hill. There’s that shit she pulled with my mom. She's not heartless, not as empty as me, anyway, but she doesn't consider self-sacrifice or humbling herself, unless it makes her look cool. I hate that."

He keeps mentioning how heartless he is. Which is unbelievably baffling to you. He just rhapsodized about how important Vriska is to him, how his feelings are complicated for her. That is the opposite of heartless.

"Anyway, I figured that if I could have fallen for anyone, it would have been her. My partner in crime," he says, straightening up and picking at the sleeve of his shirt. "But it wasn't."

You lick your lower lip, then try to make your voice sound steady when you ask, "You can't fall in love?"

He swivels around, to look at you with sad eyes. The clouds in the sky transition grayer, the ever-shifting beams of sun dimming. "I'm so sorry, Dirk. Would it make you happy if I fell in love with you?"

"Well, no shit it would," you say. "But be honest. Can you tell me if you're not capable of it at all or if you straight up don't feel that way about me?"

"Not capable," he answers, quickly.

"How can you know that?" you ask. "I mean, it'd be one thing if you were intimate with your own feelings, but you're not doing a great job of convincing me you know what you're talking about."

He frowns. "I _do_ know. I know there's nothing there."

"But there _is_ something there, John," you insist, trying very hard not to raise your voice or get frustrated. "I see it in everything you do. I don't understand why you think this way."

"Because I'm just that way!" he says, gesturing at his chest.

You press your hands to your face and force yourself to be calm. Trying to beat John at an argument will get him nowhere, the perception of himself versus how you perceive him is a massive canyon that can’t be broached with fighting. He's willing to listen, to try things, so you've got to take a different approach. Loving encouragement. You can do this.

"Can we take a step back here?" you ask, attempting to give him a kind look. "Can you tell me what you're feeling right now? And this doesn't even have to be an emotion. Are your fake-ass dream muscles tensed up? How fast is your fake-ass heart beating? Do you want me to do anything in particular? Do _you_ want to do something?"

John doesn’t answer. He just stares at you. You try to wait him out on this, but you realize quickly that he’s not silent because he’s deep in thought, he’s silent because he’s trying to wait _you_ out.

It doesn’t make any sense. The question’s simple— ‘what are you feeling?’ You could answer that in your sleep. You’re hyper aware of how you’re feeling every second of every day. So why isn’t he?

"John," you say, something clicking into place for you. "Are you… scared of looking inside yourself?"

"No!" he says, nervous, like a kneejerk reaction. "I'm not!"

"What are you afraid of?" you ask. All you get is a blank stare. "John. Tell me. What are you afraid of."

He takes a deep breath, then holds it.

You don't understand what he's doing, at first. His body shimmers, like it's wet, and you reach out for him. Your hand passes right through his torso, like he's made of ectoplasm.

You knew he'd do something like this. Ask the right questions, push the right buttons, and he tries to flee or attack if it gets too hard. On the bright side, it means you're getting somewhere.

He begins to sink down into the blackness, as though it were a thick pool of oil. His body remains crystal clear, visible as though he were still level with you. You reach for him, but your hand hits a barrier where the water line would be. You can see him swim in the darkness, directly underneath you.

You can't get through the water, like there's a layer of perfectly transparent ice between you and John. John pushes off from the invisible floor, and swims perpendicular to it, his chest skimming the top of the surface. As he glides, the water clings to him, flows against him, forming his Patrician robes that billow with the current in large, dark clouds.

You get up, and walk along the “ocean,” following his shadow-like mass of clothing beneath your feet. He looks as elegant as a mermaid, chin framed by his standard blue button earrings, hair wafting in the waters, gloved hands relaxed at his sides, black cloak fanning out like the gentle strands of a jellyfish.

"You can't run," you tell him, then immediately regret it. "Wait, no, that made me sound like a serial killer. How about… you can run, but I'll get you eventually. No, wait, that's even worse."

You hear him laugh, clear as day, but he continues to float away from you. 

You walk for a while, waiting for him to give up, but he doesn’t. This is idiotic. This is _your_ head, not his. You should be able to do whatever you want in it.

With that thought, the floor vanishes. You fall into the water with a loud splash of black and white.

This would normally be hilarious, but your head goes under and it’s heavy like the river you nearly drowned in and, oh gods, you can’t breathe. Your heart hammers with the beginnings of an attack. Your eyes shut tight and you clamp your hand over your mouth and try to fight the violent flashback of drowning that overtakes you. The only thing that saves you from true panic is the temperature— it’s quite warm. You kick up, gasping when you break the invisible surface, looking up at clouds that bespeak rain in the future.

“You dick,” you sputter, swiveling your head around and trying to find John as you tread water. Your voice comes out as panicked as you feel. “You egregious fuck. This is way too fucking soon to throw in some tragic callbacks. I’m having war flashbacks.”

With a rush of wind and sea, the water pushes away from you in two great walls, and you find yourself standing on the black water-floor once more. You stagger, unsettled at the change from liquid to solidity. John stands a few feet in front of you, at the end of the makeshift hallway, his Patrician robes shifting in unfelt air currents. He’s perfectly dry. So are you.

Like blocks fitting into square slots, the walls of ocean drop to the floor, and all is level again. Just a flat black horizon, clouds above, and white ripples beneath your feet. John stares at you, expression so emotionless you can’t read it.

You try to take deep breaths, to straighten up, to calm down. It’s okay, it’s all in your head, it’s impossible to drown here. The purple-green-gray clouds shift and roil above you, like looking at waves from underneath the ocean. You think you hear thunder in the distance, but it could be your imagination.

“I’m afraid I will find the parts of me that I’ve lost,” John says, finally answering your question.

His answer comes in lieu of an apology for throwing that water imagery at you. You’re grateful. Unfortunately, you have no idea what the fuck it means.

You press a hand to your chest, willing your heart to still. “I’m sorry dude, I’m going to have to ask you to elaborate.”

John lets his eyes fall shut, and he steeples his hands together at his waist. In a calm, toneless voice, he says, "I know I bottle stuff up. It’s kind of my thing. I have to do that. So I’m scared that, if I think about it or try to define what I’m feeling, all the parts of me I’ve gotten rid of might come back."

He’s acting impersonal. You figure it’s a coping mechanism, to be able to talk to you. You’ll wait a bit before calling it out.

“But those parts aren’t truly dead. You had a big freak out on the ship about it. You’re not empty, and you’re not fine,” you say, trying to stay as calm as him. “So what’s the harm in letting yourself mull on your feelings for a while? It can’t get worse.”

“It can though,” he says, breathing deep. He opens his eyes, his gaze icy. “Dirk, I don’t think you get it. Like, think about it a little.”

He spreads his arms out, like he’s showing off his outfit. “When I was a kid, I promised myself I would never become my mother. I'd never try to puppeteer anybody. I'd never kill for gain. I'd never make betas of myself for stupid tasks. I'd never play cruel tricks. I'd be full of warmth and love and never be cold. But somewhere along the line I had to break all of those to do my job right. And if I didn’t kill off the parts of myself that made those promises, I think I would be dead by my own hand.”

You listen, in silence. It cannot be easy for him to admit this to you. That he’s been pulling off imperfect murders of the self. He’s so detached from it all, too. You wonder if he’s just performing this for you, acting like this is some revelation. You suppose he’s just going to try to suppress it all again the minute he gets out of your head.

He continues, with sweeping gestures like he’s giving a speech at a podium. "You get it, right? Like what parts of me had to die to be a leader? What parts of me had to die in order to make all these beta Johns, and murder myself? What parts of me had to die in order to kill my mom?"

Next to him, a ghostly apparition of his mother appears in a glow of white. It’s a lifesized doll, an animated, transparent manikin poised with her hands steepled at the waist and her black cloak draping down to the floor. She’s got Jane's petite stature and Jake's skin and Jade's long hair with not a strand of gray. Her and John share the same eyes, the blue that can swap from icy to open skies with just shift in their glance, behind square frames that fit their faces too well. 

He bends down to make imaginary eye contact with her, puts his hands on her slight shoulders. He laughs a little, desperate. "You know, if I could talk to her again… I don't even think she'd be mad. She'd be really proud of me. Not just because I pulled off a coup in true family tradition, but because I've lost a lot of the burdens I used to have. I rarely feel scared or sad or angry or guilty anymore; she always said those things were killers. Nowadays I don’t feel much of anything, because I’ve lost all that. But sometimes, like on the ship, I can’t bottle it up quick enough. I guess I’m scared of losing what little is left, deep inside.”

Sadness bubbles in your throat. Your chest is tight. "John, if you know you're losing yourself, that means you have something left to lose."

John presses a parting kiss to Patrician Crocker’s forehead. She vanishes in a wisp of smoke. He turns to you, a blank stare on his face, mouth flatlined.

"But… Dirk… Here's the thing," he says. "I don't know if I want to keep what's left. I'm a way better leader if I don't doubt myself. Or if I don't get scared. If I don't regret the decisions I made. If I'm chill about sacrificing myself. So I have to get rid of the bad feelings, and the good feelings have to go with. And I refuse to define what little feelings I have, because I guess, in the end, I don’t truly want to feel them.”

The worst part is, you can’t even argue from a pragmatic approach. He’s been doing a _fantastic_ job of leading, and he has scraped his metaphorical skin down to the bone to get there. The only solution you can think of is what Karkat suggested, a long ways back. Maybe he was right about forcibly removing John from his office.

“Perhaps you should consider stepping away for your health,” you suggest. “Let Jane take the reigns for a while.”

John’s eyes grow wide with horror, and he finally drops his statuesque persona. He marches to you, looms over you as his cloak billows around you like the winds of a typhoon.

"If I did not have this job," he says, solemnly. "There would be no reason for me to get out of bed in the morning. "

You frown. "That can't be true. You'd find plenty of reasons. Your friends or your cooking or whatever antics Vriska planned for you…"

"No. I wouldn’t," he says, and grabs your shoulders. He looks you dead in the eye, desperate for you to take this seriously. "There isn't a lot I can be confident in about myself, so trust me when I tell you that this is like, the _one thing._ I _know,_ for certain, that if I wasn't a leader, or didn't have a big huge grandiose purpose or whatever, that I would lie in my bed with the curtains shut and curl myself into a ball and wish for death every worthless day of my life."

Fuck.

“Okay,” you breathe out, believing him. “Alright. I’ll take your word for it.”

John lets go of your shoulders, standing up straight and tall. So you can’t remove him from his job, because he’ll die, but if he keeps going like this, he’ll die. His proposition is that he simply removes what’s left of his heart from the equation, so he cannot be impacted by the earth shaking decisions he has to make any longer.

Thinking it over… it doesn’t make much sense.

You think of him laying in bed after his father died, a symptom Vriska mentioned he exhibited on occasion. You think of how he’s snapped from anger, from betrayal, how he punched you. You think about how freaked out he was that all his relationships were the result of his cold, subconscious mind. You think about how he cares for his people, his friends, his family, for you. How he’s so scared of hurting you, how he wants to cook with you, dress you up, banter with you… The things he wouldn’t do if he truly lacked a heart.

You don’t think John is cold at all. He’s just seeing things in monochrome.

“Can I propose an alternate theory,” you ask.

John nods.

“You’re not a sociopath, John,” you state. “You can’t cut off emotions at a whim like that. That’s… absolutely not how it works, trust me, I’ve tried. I think the only reason you’re semi-able to do so is because you’re severely depressed from all the shit heaped on you since childhood, magnified by your willingness to use depression to cope with all the hard decisions you’ve made. The world, for you, is all gray and emotionless until things get so intense it breaks through. It’s masking itself as psychopathy.”

He narrows his eyes. “Okay…?”

“And the reason you’re not aware you’re depressed is due to your penchant for suppression. It’s like a tenuous ouroboros of mental issues. They’re all working hand in hand to keep you roughly stable,” you theorize. “The point is, sorry, dude, but you can _never_ get rid of your whole self. No matter how bad you want it, your plan won’t work. Emotions are always going to affect how you do your job, whether you want them to or not.”

He sighs, looks away from you, and loses some of the posture he’s been forcing for most of this conversation. He runs a hand through his hair, says in a more normal timbre, “I don’t know… I guess that kind of resonates with me, but like… If that were true, what would I even do about it?”

“I can help you work through it. I can help you learn how to define motives, how to verbalize your feelings, how to come to terms with yourself. I can help with removing that barrier of suppression and learning how to define what’s there, pen it all down so you know what you can feel and how can grow again. It’s not some… easy-ass fix, it’s going to take months or years of work, but I’ll be there with you the whole way,” you say, your voice raising to earnest-emotive levels. “But that can all be put away for another day. I think the first step for you is… you’re going to have to _want_ to get better. You’re going to have to _want_ to feel things again, want to stop suppressing stuff so much. That’s gotta drive you forward.”

John laughs, like he can’t believe you. “This is how I lead. I’m pretty sure things would get really bad if guilt and fear and stuff took me over?”

You sigh. He’s not wrong. But fuck that noise, keeping him alive is the most important thing to you right now. John's not going to get better for himself, and he's not going to listen when you or others tell him to get better unless if it’s a short-term fix that doesn’t impact his leadership. So how can you stack the deck in a way he'll see the light?

John is paradoxically selfless and selfish, a martyr willing to do anything to get to his goal. His goal, you've learned, is to have a driving purpose. Can you frame it in a way where he prioritizes his “grandiose purpose” as wanting to get better, even though the road ahead is rocky, that it will affect his job?

The first thing that comes to mind is that you make his goal to be able to fall in love with you.

The concept makes you uncomfortable. You don't know if you can price yourself high enough as someone's reason for recovery. You don't think that your mere, inferior existence should be the driving force behind his goal to get better. Your bond cannot possibly be that valuable. And goddess forbid, if it actually is, then you'll probably end up hurting him somehow.

But… what else do you have? You have to try, or it will kill you that you never did.

You shut your eyes for a moment, to clear the queasiness away. It doesn't really help.

“What about the good emotions?” you murmur. “Don’t you want to feel the good shit again? Don’t you want to be able to fall in love?”

He immediately knows what you’re after. He looks at you, sadly, and you know what the answer is. Your heart sinks. You should try a different question.

"John," you say, and your voice is quivering. "When you daydream about the future… am I there with you?"

He doesn't say anything, just waits. The clouds above you shift and shine rays of dim light over his face. His robes still lap around your legs and ankles.

"Am I…" You swallow hard, clench your fists, and go all in. “Do you fantasize about me? Do you think about… about cooking together or waking up with me?”

He scratches his chin. "Yeah, I guess…"

"Can you tell me what you dream of?"

He rolls his eyes up towards the sky, thinking. “Uh. I dunno, just making stuff together, or whatever.”

He is apparently not forthcoming with his domestic fantasies. You try another angle, one that you’re certain will work. Maybe you can start with the physical, drive it to what he wants about you emotionally. “What about the sexual stuff? Fantasies about me in bed?”

He giggles, although the lightheartedness can’t completely erase the tension between the two of you. “Really? What’s this got to do with anything? You really want me to get raunchy?”

“I do,” you say, forcing a confident smirk. “Tell me all the weird shit you want to do with me. I want to hear it all. What do you like about me in bed?”

He chuckles. “Okay, sure, I’ll bite. Um, well, my imagination tends towards me being in charge! And you’re, uh…”

You wink at him, obnoxiously. "Prone to getting tied up to the headboard and waiting for some powerful man to come rescue me? With his penis."

"I always knew that my penis had a heroic destiny," he says, laughing. "But, okay, that is a little more extreme than what I was going for, but yeah! I think about having you like that."

"There's gotta be more," you say, trying to coax him to talk. "What about that night we spent together. What did you want about me then."

"I dunno, I wanted to fuck you," he says, shrugging. "I was glad you asked me to. Uh, what else… I wanted to kiss you a lot. You're so pretty, like, I can't stop looking at your face sometimes. Oh, and I wanted to touch your dick so bad once I saw it. Those piercings are cool!"

Even if this is going to go nowhere, you want to hear him complement your dick more, so you keep the thread of conversation going. "I'm poppin' a mind boner right now. Dirty talk me, baby. Tell me what you want."

"Oooooooo, Strider," he says, mock-swooning. "I want allllllll of you. I want to suck your dick. Okay, but, actually though, I _do_ want to suck your dick."

You wink again. "Willing and ready. What other dirty fantasies do you have about me."

His eyes light up. He's got a lot, apparently. You’ve got him on a roll. "Oh! I want to have a real hot and sweaty round of fisticuffs with you, and I want to win so I can throw you down and get you in an arm bar and it will be totally sexy. Obviously, we are all oiled up and glistening and wearing really tight shorts during all this so it is extra homo erotic."

"Obviously."

He chuckles. He drops to his knees, in front of you, sitting straight up. His head is about even with your chest. He wraps his arms around your waist, pulls you close, and gazes up at you. It’s like that time he seduced you at the party.

His mouth pops into a bright smile. "Okay, also, a major one that's been going through my head a lot: I bang you in the bath tub."

You're genuinely into that. You rest your arms on his shoulders. "Easy cleanup, nice callback, vaguely taboo for me which will get me all hot and bothered… I like it."

“Yeah! And the best part is we probably don't need lube because of all that water,” he says, and pauses to watch you glare at him. He giggles. “Just joshing you. Anyway, I think it'd be fun if we were in my bath and you were sitting on my lap, because I could get to kiss your ear piercings that way. It just sounds really nice and intimate…”

You open your mouth to say something smarmy, but you change your mind when it appears John tripped deep into thought. You instead choose to run your hand through his hair. He looks somewhere around your waistband, face relaxed.

“What else do you want?” you ask, gentle. “List it off for me.”

“I want to be intimate with you some more,” he murmurs. He slips his hands up your shirt, drags his fingers along the skin of your lower back. “I want to get a good look at you, I haven't gotten a chance yet during those other two times. I want to go really slow with you. I want to explore your piercings, like, a lot. I want to see what they feel like inside me.”

You wonder what he’s feeling. Want without passion, only an emotionless desire, the few words that make it through his barriers of depression and suppression. He continues on, jerking his head up to look at you, earnest. His tone is slow and meandering, like he’s savoring each want before vocalizing it.

“I want to make you feel good. I want to see you arch your back and look pretty for me. I want you to wrap your hands around my neck because I trust you to do it right. I want to touch you, and while I do that I want you to call me that dumb nickname you have for me, because even though it’s _definitely_ pretty dumb it makes me feel like I’m something precious, and I like that. I want to feel like I’m the light of your life when we’re getting intimate, which also sounds kind of dumb, but whatever.”

His mouth parts with realization, something clicking into place for him. You begin to sink into the floor. Warm water soaks into your boots, engulfs John’s cloak, laps against your waist. You trust him enough to pay it no mind. The water has no effect on his voice as he sinks beneath.

"I want to trace the bones of your hips with my thumb until you get hard again. I want to have sex with you twice in a row, even though that's incredibly unrealistic, but with the power of persistence and self-belief I think we can achieve anything. I want to not give a damn about cleaning up. I want to lay my head on your chest and listen to your heart calm down and know that you're there."

You dip underneath the surface, fully submerged. You breathe it in; it fills your lungs like heavy oxygen. You sink before him, as though your back is weighted, and John clings to your waist and follows your descent. You hold onto his arms, pull him so he’s even with you as gravity drags you through the water. His eyes are wide, earnest, his speech vulnerable as he continues.

"I want to see what the love bites I leave on your neck look like. I want to see how dark I can make them. I want to make you laugh, too, when you're in bed with me. I want to see you smile again, it's way too rare. I want to hold your hands for a while. I want you to hold my hands if they’re shaky. I want you to hold my hands until they stop shaking.”

His fingers dig into your back as he clings to you. His breaths come out shaky, like he’s sobbing, but his blue eyes are crystal clear. You’re so enchanted by his gaze, you could not look away even if you wanted to. His voice transitions into something needy, like he’s begging you for this.

“I want to go to bed with you in the evenings. I want to read shitty pulp novels with you while we’re snuggled up on the pillows. I want you to make fun of them and I want to defend my honorable 100% objectively correct position. I want you to read aloud, whatever you’re reading, because I love how your voice sounds, have I ever told you that? I want you to know how silky smooth I think your voice sounds. I want you to talk with me about anything, anything at all.”

His cloak billows behind him in a great cloud, like ink released in water. You pull him closer as you fall together, wrapping your arms around him into a full hug. You get as close as possible without losing the intensity of his facial expressions.

“I want to know all about you. Like I want to know about your Mothers and where you grew up and I want to know how you feel about it. I want to know the things that made you into who you are. I want to see the look on Dave’s face when you tell him we’re banging. I want you to show me your room, like take me on a Strider whirlwind tour. I want you to show me your tchotchkes and I want you to walk me through all your weird porn. I want you to wax poetic about your bathtub at me. I want to teach you how to make your bed right, because you never fucking make it and it’s super annoying. I want to watch you draw. I want to model completely naked for you, and you can draw me. I want you to give up halfway through that drawing because you find me totally irresistible and need to hop on my dick right that minute.”

There’s no floor to your ocean, and you wouldn’t have it any other way. The descent is as intimate as a slow dance. Your whole world is John, his head framed by perfect blackness.

“I want to tease you a whole lot. I want you to mess with me! I want to mess with you. I really want to mess with you! I want you to take sweet revenge on me too, because I know you’re capable of it, but you haven’t gotten an opportunity to be silly with me yet. I want to see you grow older. I want you to be around. I want you to be there to meet my kids. I want you to be like, their weird godfather that shows them cool sword tricks. I want you to maybe help them out if they have the drippy eye thing going on. I want you to watch them grow up with me. I want you to tell me if I suck at being a dad. I want to change, if you tell me.”

He presses both his hands to your face, and his voice speeds up, as though he’s afraid he’s running out of time to tell you all this.

“I want to make you so many things. I have meals planned in my head, I want to make them all with you! I want to make pasta with you. I want to make egg dishes with you. I want to make _Poularde de Bresse en vessie_ with you. I want to make you a really quick piece of toast for breakfast because we spent way too long having wicked sweet morning sex before getting up! I want to go fishing with you in the river and watch you catch like, a salmon or something with your bare hands, because that is stupid and seems like something you would do, and then I want to clean it and cook it over the fire with just some salt and oil and I want you to make a snarky comment about seasoning but think it’s delicious anyway. I want to make you a really elaborate six or seven course meal, and I don’t even want to eat it, I just want to watch you do that little secret smile thing you do when you like my cooking a whole lot, because it’s my favorite when you do that.”

You reach out for him, press your palms to his cheeks. The black void leaking from your eyes skims along his skin, like water droplets on glass, then fades into the sea around you. His final words are a plea, his voice hoarse with emotion.

“Dirk, I want to fall in love with you! I want you to help me learn how to get there! I want to get better!”

You brush your thumb across his lips. He stares at you like you have the power to kill him with a single word.

"John. My John," you say. "I can't wait to see you shine."

He exhales, as though he was holding his breath for hours. He brushes your bangs away. Then with a careful, quiet touch, presses his hand over your eyes. 

You let them fall shut in the dark, breathe in, and transition into life.

The ache of the real world weighs on your muscles, but you don’t pay it any heed. John’s body is warm against you, breathing soft in the light of the dawn. Bright morning sun shimmers across his hair.

You pull John’s soul from your socket, and press it between his parted lips. He inhales, sharp, as he returns to his body. His eyes flutter open.

He turns his head against the pillow to look at you, and smiles gently.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Last chapter will take a while, hang on tight!


	34. How Do I Live? ('Til The Last Breath Remix)

Heavy down comforter, wool blankets, silken pillows, soft sheets. Your partner’s smile. Despite the hypothermia, and the cold morning air, you have never felt warmer.

He shifts onto his side, to get a better look at you. He rests his hand on your waist, underneath the covers. You cup his jawline, stroke his cheek with your thumb. His soft expression, his gorgeous eyes, you need it all.

There is no experience quite like returning someone’s gaze and exposing your whole soul to them, and vice versa. Emotional intimacy gets its hooks in you and you can no longer fear it. You love him dearly. 

You can, for once, read him like a book. And you adore every word written on the pages. He wants you so much. You cannot even bring yourself to doubt that.

You glide into one another's arms like it's natural to belong there. You pull each other close. His eyelashes flutter against your cheek, he inhales softly when you press your lips to his temple. He returns the gesture, kissing the corner of your eye as you let your lids fall shut. He shifts, you part your lips, you feel his breath.

One kiss turns into two, then three, more, and you both move against the bed to fully embrace one another. You are a tangle of limbs and love. The kiss deepens. Warmth radiates from every point of contact-- your lips, tongues, torsos, arms and hands and hips and legs.

You cannot get close enough to him. You'd literally meld into him if you could. Kissing him isn't enough to untie the warm knot in your chest and throat. You want to do everything to him. You want to gaze into his eyes and whisper sweet nothings to him and have sex with him and hold him and listen to his heart, all at once. 

John gets it together before you, actually does something besides for staying willfully trapped in a full body hug. He glides his hands all over your back, under your shirt, then dips them beneath your waistband. It's a few moments more before you have to pull away.

“Are you seriously kneading my ass?”

“It’s nice and doughy!” he whines, while simultaneously trying to kiss your open mouth. “We should get undressed.”

"You’re up for sex?" you ask, surprised. You dodge his incessant kiss maneuvers in order to converse. "I don't know if _I'm_ up for sex. I'm really fuckin’ tired, dude."

“We don’t have to make love if you don’t want to!” he says, giving up and pressing his forehead to yours. “I just want to… express some stuff in a physical way! Tell me that being naked together doesn’t sound awesome right now.”

"You know what? It kinda does," you murmur, nuzzling him. You absolutely can’t argue. Skin to skin contact sounds incredible. And if sex follows, then why not?

You can’t bear to stop smooching him for long, even to get undressed, so you dip to his neck, press your lips to his throat. Smooth and soft; yup, you’re definitely the High Shaving Overlord. You kiss up to his jawline, feel him swallow and shudder and gasp. He detaches his hands from your ass to grip your back and pull you closer.

You push on his shoulders and roll over with him, to lay on top of him and thread your fingers through his hair and resume proper makeouts. You love how tight he hugs you, how strong his arms feel as he presses you close to his chest. You delay your goal of undressing in favor of some strenuous, loving mouth-to-mouth.

You eventually pull away, stroke back John’s hair. His lips are parted, he’s panting, his face relaxed, his eyes boring deep into yours. He trusts you completely. You hope you’re not fooling yourself when you classify his expression as “utterly in-love.” It makes you shiver down to your soul.

“You wanted a good look at me, right?” you ask. “I can put on a little show.”

His face splits into a full grin. “Hell yes. Entertain me! I’m on the edge of my seat.”

You return his smile. You unstick yourself from him to slip underneath the covers, getting out of bed and standing at his side. You wait for him to grab his glasses on the nightstand.

It’s freezing without his arms around you. You’re probably still cold from exhaustion and whatever residual hypothermia remains, but on the bright side, that means your nipples are going to be on fucking point. John props his head up on one arm, beaming at you. He gives you a thumbs up when he’s got his glasses adjusted.

You reach behind you, tug off your shirt by the back of the collar, let it fall to the floor. John licks his lower lip, his eyes drawn to your abdomen and pecs in particular. You like that, you like how he enjoys you. On a whim, you lift up your right arm and flex. “Oh!” he gasps, pressing his hand to his cheek in delight. You repeat the motion with your other arm. You swear his eyes alight with cartoon stars.

He makes a looping motion with his pointer finger, so you turn around. You show off your back muscles by hooking an elbow around your opposite forearm, which elicits a light round of applause from John. You wiggle your shoulders, like a shimmy, and untie the drawstring of your pajama pants.

It occurs to you that you don’t feel awkward _at all._ With previous partners, you’d either be putting on a strip show for someone ironically or because you were participating in a dom-sub thing. It’s unbelievably pleasant to be genuinely appreciated. It’s even more pleasant to not doubt yourself.

You hook your thumbs around your waistband to slowly ease your pajamas down your hips to John’s chants of, “Nice! Niiiiiiiice!” You wiggle your ass, since he likes the damn thing so much.

You step out of your clothes and flex again, before turning around to face him once more. You're not erect. The strip show felt very wholesome, and you're also sleepy as fuck, so your dick is pillow-soft.

John doesn’t mind. He’s biting his lip, waggling his eyebrows at rapid rates. He sits up, so his torso is above the blankets. He spreads his arms out towards you, wanting a hug.

He’s still got that tremor, his fingers shaking when unsupported. Sympathy wells up in your chest. Instead of falling into his embrace, you take his hands in yours and hold them tight like you’re about to pull him into a dance.

"You're trembling," you say. "We should put a pin in this. Pick it up later. Let's go eat something."

John shakes his head. He squeezes your hands. "No way. You're the only thing I want to eat right now! You're food for the soul."

"That's some… cheesy bullshit," you grumble, but your heart is swelling with warmth. You squeeze his hands in return. "Cathartic nudity or no, you still need actual food."

He gives you this godawful, gaudy wink, mouth in an open smile. "Well… what if I want you to try some weird Dirk Strider sex things on me? It’s probably better if I don’t eat beforehand, right?"

You feel your face heat. If he’s down for it, that sounds fuckin’ rad. Neither hell nor high waters nor soft dicks nor tremors will prevent you from jamming your fingers into John’s supple asshole. This is the _dream._ "Alright, sunshine. If that's how you want it. Just know I'm going to be excruciatingly gentle. I'm going to treat you like a fragile baby bird."

John raises an eyebrow, trickster's grin spreading across his face. "You want to fuck a fragile baby bird? You some kind of fragile baby bird fucker?"

"You bet. Love to get that baby yolk all over my dick. The chunky eggshell bits really get me heated," you say. You ignore John's "Ha ha, oh my god," to let go of his hands and tug at his shirt. He sits up as straight as possible, shakily, and raises his arms so you can pull his shirt off. He kicks off his pants under the blankets, knocks them off the edge of the bed with his bare legs.

He pulls back the covers. He’s as soft as you are, which is fine by you. You crawl over him, straddle his lap, press your knees against the mattress, and he bunches the blankets around your waists best he can. You lace your fingers with his, holding them tight between your chests, so his hands will still.

Skin to skin contact is the fucking tops. His gorgeous face is like, _right there,_ and you’re bound by a higher power to press your lips to his temple, then the shell of his ear. You leave butterfly kisses on his cheeks and blobby skin-oil stains on his glasses. You listen to him laugh and feel him clutch your hands in his. He returns the gestures, when you let him, and you decide you don’t need the blankets to feel warm again.

He pulls back to smile at you, and says with a purring voice, “Hey, I kind of want to suck your dick…”

You can't argue with a blowjob. You gift him a sugar sweet parting kiss before shifting up high on your knees. He slides back and half-sits half-lays, his back propped against the wall and the pillows. His head is at perfect dick sucking height from how you're straddling him. He reaches out for you, and pulls you towards him by firmly grasping your ass. You’re a little cold without the full body contact, but you ignore the chill because, blowjobs, man. Blowjobs.

"Uh, just like, scream if I'm bad at it?" he says, narrowing his eyes at your dick. He pulls off his glasses, and hands them to you. You put them on your crown like a fashionable headband.

"I hope to hell you don't make me scream. I'm not sure if you know this, but biting is _bad."_

"Wow, really!" he says, with fake enthusiasm. He pokes your soft dick, which tickles. "I had noooooooo idea!"

He does not just shove his mouth over it. He’s the kind of guy who wants to get to know your cock before getting down to business. The teasing type. The type with an oral fixation. He kisses the head, giving you the shivers. His tongue flicks out to lick at the metal balls of your piercings. He smiles to himself, traces his fingers along the ridges of muscles appearing as your cock begins to stiffen. He runs his tongue from the tip to the base of your shaft, relishing every goddamn second of, well, _you._ It feels good, in a soft, relaxing sense. You rarely get a blowjob when you’re not hard, so the difference in sensation is a treat.

He pulls back to make a pinching gesture with his fingers, which he uses to slowly shift your piercings so they slide up and down inside you. You’re just soft enough for this to work, although not for long if he keeps it up. You grab a handful of John’s hair and whimper as the firey sensation burns through you. Arousal intensifies the feeling, his continuous stimulation doing wonders for your boner. 

"Aw, don't get hard yet," says John, pouty. "This is fun."

You have to take a couple breaths to collect yourself and make eye contact with him. "It's difficult not to be aroused when you're literally stroking my genitals."

"What if I make a dumb face at you, like-" He proceeds to make a dumb face at you. "Did that turn you off?"

Your cock twitches. "Oops, it backfired. Made you more endearing."

"Noooooooooo," cries John, over-exaggerated. He sighs, apparently gives up on keeping you soft-ish, and coaxes you further towards him by tugging on your thighs.

He takes you into his mouth. He can't deepthroat, can barely get half your dick in; he must have one heck of a gag reflex. He uses his hand for the parts he can't cover, jerks you off with circular strokes. He pays special attention to the head with his tongue and how he sucks in a bit. He's probably going off of what he likes, as he's got no other reference. You like it too. Warmth surges through you every time his tongue presses up against the ridge of muscle on the underside, every time his hand completes a stroke. Everything is electric and hot, made all the better because it’s performed by someone you love.

Your erection is as perfect as a goddamn obelisk at this point. At a particularly nice swirl of his tongue, you make a noise like you just stepped into a too-hot bath. John looks up at you, eyes smiling. You run your hands through his hair.

"You're doing good," you murmur, and you mean it.

He takes his mouth off you to say, "Could you come if I kept doing this?"

"Mmm, probably," you say. "Tighten your grip a bit."

He doesn't. "I don't want you to come."

"Oh?"

He takes a moment to wrap his lips around the head again. He draws back slow, precome and spit bridging his lower lip and your dick. You mentally etch the image into your brain so you can draw it later. He gives you some sultry eyes. "I want you to fuck me."

The thought of you bending him over and taking him is delicious. Your cock tenses in his grip. But you can't.

"I hate to crush your dreams, but the ass stuff takes some… easing into. While I'd love to-" don't say 'claim your virgin hole,' don't say 'claim your virgin hole.' "-claim your virgin hole, I don't think it's the smartest thing to do at the moment. I can just use my fingers for now."

John licks your cock clean, then makes a face at you. "Um! I'm offended! You think I'm some kind of… butt virgin!? Fool."

"Color me surprised," you say, stroking his hair back behind his ears. An image you _do not want_ flashes through your mind. "I'm not going to think about who you did that with."

He grins, devilishly. "What? You mean, myself?"

Your dick throbs in his hand. "Wait, do you mean, you've actually fucked yourself, or…?"

The tips of his ears flush red. "Oh! Ha ha, no way. I meant with fingers and toys and stuff! I made one self-cest attempt, once, but like… Do you know how awkward it is to look down at yourself and make eye contact with yourself while you're on your knees and have your own dick in your mouth? I tapped him out at light speed."

"Huh," you say, mildly disappointed. Although you can't throw stones in glass houses here; if your clone tried to fuck you, you’d kill them. John lets go of you. You ease yourself back, sit on his hips so you can reach the dedicated lube drawer in your nightstand.

John chuckles, patting your thighs. "Aww, don't worry, if you want to be spit roasted by me and another me then that is still cool! I'm comfortable with myself."

"No thanks. That's just pedestrian," you say. As you talk, you dig through the drawer for the vial you want. You’ve got a bunch of different oils and gels, many of them magically enchanted to enhance pleasure or taste. You decide to hunt for some plain old average lube. Maybe the vanilla flavored one. "I want at least three of you to line up and fuck me one at a time like a gangbang, and then each of you has another turn because I calculated that there should be enough of a break between the rotation of the trifecta for a second round. So that constitutes six total cream pies, after which I will be fully launched into subspace and possibly incapable of orgasm, but you'll give me an aftercare handjob in the bathtub while I sit on your lap and it'll be the greatest day of my life."

You find it, and place it on top of the nightstand for use in the near future. You set his glasses next to the vial while you’re at it. You get yourself situated back on the bed, straddling him fully. "Also, I am preferably hogtied during this whole series of events, and I want all of you to be clothed because I enjoy the symbolic demonstration of power. Maybe one of you has a whip. And you're all wearing those black leather gloves, the tight riding ones."

"Ha ha, what?" he says, grinning like an idiot. He glances down at your dick and raises an eyebrow, still smiling. "Jeez, you're actually really into all that? I didn't know you liked my gloves so much. Do you want me to put them on right now?"

"No," you say, and take a moment to pluck his hand up and kiss his knuckles. "Not when I'm topping. This is my town now, bitch."

John bursts into laughter, and you catch yourself smiling back. 

You’re chilly enough to start shivering, and you want to see how aroused he is anyway, so you slide down to lay next to him and cover up with the blankets. You slip your hand between his legs, and he reaches over to mirror your touch. He jerks you off slow, and ducks in for a kiss, which you gladly reciprocate. You often found mutual masturbation boring in the past, but in this case it’s quite nice. May have to reevaluate your opinions on simultaneous dick touching.

He’s still completely soft. You’re a little surprised, but not bothered. You make a cupping motion with your hand, gently play with him to get him erect. He’s a shower, so you’ve got a lot of area to toy with. A few pleasant minutes pass, where you’re distracted by his kisses and the gentle strokes he’s giving you, but he doesn’t even get a halfsie.

You pull away to ask him about it. “You doing okay?”

“I, uh,” he says, looking firmly at your mouth. “Yeah! I just… I guess my dick isn’t coming along for the ride. Which kind of sucks, but I really want to keep going. I swear.”

You decide to believe him. You recollect your first time together, and figure it’s a similar situation. Dude’s fucking exhausted, but wants to be with you. You can still have a good time. 

"Why?" you ask, gently. "We can make this a fun test about verbalizing your feelings. Why do you want to have sex with me if you're not physically aroused?"

John makes a ‘bleh’ face, and lets go of your dick. "Ugh, you mean I have to think?"

"Yeah, sorry dude, self-care is hard work."

He rolls his eyes, but does put in an effort to think through it. It takes him a couple seconds. You take a break from the sexy stuff to hug each other beneath the blankets.

"I want to-" He pauses to bite his lip, give you gorgeous doe eyes. "I want to be with you? I want to hug you so tight that you basically merge into me. Like a weird amoeba. And what better way to do that then anal sex?"

“Love your eloquent dirty talk, dude. But the feeling’s mutual,” you say, pressing a kiss to the tip of his nose. “Anything else?”

He hums, happily, then looks away. "And... well... tell me if you think I'm just pulling this out of my ass, but I think I want to work out some stuff with you in a physical way? I feel like a storm, after that talk we had. And I don't want to use my internal weather magic to lock the storm away and make it all sunny again. Does that make sense?"

"Sure it does, partly cloudy."

John laughs. "Oh my god, call me that again and I’ll chomp through your penis."

"Hot," you say, deadpan. “A’ight, well, good enough for me and my incessant throbbing boner. Still down for anal?”

“Still down for anal!” he chirps, and rolls onto his back.

You sit up, pulling most of the covers off you. It’s best if you’re able to see what you’re doing for this. John wants to look at you as well, so he plonks his glasses on. You help him get his thick-ass legs into position as you kneel between them, jam a pillow under his lower back for easy access. John grabs the lube off the nightstand and hands it over. You screw off the glass lid, pour a dollop in your palm and warm it by rubbing it between your hands. Smells good, John makes a snarky comment on how his ass is going to smell like dessert. You make a snarky comment about eating it.

You get your fingers slick with the oil, press your thumb against him. “Ready?” you say, massaging the rim. “I’ll start slow.”

“Okay!” he says, happily.

You push your forefinger in. Warm and… not as tight as you thought he’d be. It slides in extremely easy. You pause, then go for two, which is a little tighter. He doesn’t even flinch. He makes a contented noise when you do so, his face a picture of bliss.

You can’t help but chuckle fondly. “You sure are eager.”

He opens his eyes just to roll them at you. “I’m happy and relaxed, you dumb fuck.”

“That’s not something you call someone who has total control over your asshole right now,” you say, crooking your fingers. John makes a pleasant gasping sound.

You find the spot you’re looking for with some gentle prodding, watching John’s reactions as you finger him. It’s easy to find— a hard knot of muscle towards the front.

You dip your other hand beneath his cock. You press your thumb against his perineum. It’s harder to find from the exterior. You poke around until you find a spot that seems right, and press in on his soft skin. You match the pressure internally. Like some kind of sexual vice clamp.

John’s eyes honest-to-goddess roll back into his head. His voice is a long, contented sigh. “Oh, shiiiiiiiit, that’s good. Sweet prostate trick, dude.”

He raises his hand towards you, and you high five it. You have to re-find his prostate from the outside, but fuckin’ worth it. 

“Tell me if this is too much, ‘kay?” you say, and wait for him to nod before beginning.

You massage him externally with your thumb while rubbing at him internally with your fingers, starting slow and gentle. John arches his back, hands grasping behind his head for the pillow, gasping and whining. You perform some Dark Sex Wizardry with your hands, watching every muscle on his body tense and relax with your strokes. It’s hot, but it’s best when his cock spasms, pumping out streams of clear precome onto his thigh.

His dick is tensing like it’s going to get hard, but continuously deflates real early in the process. Lil’ guy’s tryin’ his best, you guess. His lack of boner at this point in the game is kind of freaking you out. It’s hard to tell if he’s reacting like this because he’s over-sensitive or because he’s really into it. You've never done this type of intimate full-sex thing if your partner wasn't hard. Closest thing you've done is play with your own ass when you're soft, on the quest for that Ultimate Anal Experience. But that's different, since you're hyper-aware of your own reactions.

“Still doing okay?” you ask him, continuing your massage.

His eyelashes are fluttering, head thrown back into the pillow, his hips subconsciously thrusting onto your fingers. With great effort, he manages to gasp out, "Dirk- Dirk I love this- I-"

“Tell me if you want me to stop.”

“Mhmm.”

You let your eyes wander, confident John will tell you if something goes awry. You like to watch his ab muscles flex, they’re so perfect that they wouldn’t look out of place chiseled onto a eight-head-tall marble statue. His massive, hammer-swinging biceps are pulsing every time he grips and re-grips the sheets. It’s a wonder how the sleeves on his shirts aren’t exploding off all the time. You want him to use all of that body weight on you sometime, beat you in a fight and dominate you. God fucking dammit you cannot believe you have him with you, that him holding you down is an actual possibility in the future.

John’s blissed-out voice removes you from your thoughts. “I- I want your cock.”

You stop moving your fingers, so he can talk. You glance down at yourself.

"Sorry, I kind of lost it," you say, laughing a little. You'd be embarrassed if this was with a hookup, but it's just John. He's making erectile dysfunction more fun than it has any right to be. "Maintaining two depressive boners at once while post-hypothermia and running on four hours of sleep is a delicate art, apparently."

You slide your fingers out of him. John props himself up on his elbows so he can beam at you. “Does this mean I can suck your dick again!?” he asks, delighted.

You wink at him, then start digging through the blankets for wherever you set down the vial of lube. “Just oil me up and dirty talk me, baby. I think that’ll be good enough.”

"Ohhhhhhhh, Diiiiiiiirk, break my anal hymen," he says, in a fake whiney sex voice. "Take my butt hole virginity. Come inside me and get me mpreg."

You find the bottle, hand it to John. He unscrews the cap, pours a bunch into his palm, then sets it back on the table. You raise an eyebrow at him. “Wow, you sure do know how to turn me on. Anal hymen. _Anal hymen.”_

You shift so you’re straddling his hips, so he can reach you. He pointedly waits until he’s slathering your dick with oil, your head lolling back as his hands work wonders for your arousal, before replying with a squeaky, “Oooooooo, don’t hurt me on my first time, honey bee.”

You snap your gaze downward to shoot him a death glare. "I'm actually going to shove my whole fist up your ass now," you say. He giggles. You raise yourself up and tap his hip. "Roll over, bitch."

"Roll over bitch," he mocks, half-assedly imitating your voice. He rolls onto his stomach beneath you.

You scoot back, to assume the position. He helpfully shoves a pillow beneath his pelvis to raise himself up a little, and hugs another one underneath his chest. You have him spread his legs out wide so you can kneel between them. You figure you’ll want to spoon him instead of initiating a more impersonal doggy-style, so you stay low. Your erection isn’t diamond hard or anything, but it’s good enough to enter him. 

You lean down, pull your hips back. Your face is comfortably pressed into his upper shoulderblades, but with some effort you can stretch out to kiss his neck. Which you do. He giggles, reaches behind him to pat your hips.

You shift up on your elbows. You rub your dick against his ass for propensity's sake, and because you are a level 100 sex master of the dark reaches, you simply angle your hips right and slide inside him without any guidance. John makes a contented breathy noise, like he's slipping into warm water. 

He’s tight. You’re pretty sure your dick is getting to diamond levels. You don’t push too fast. “Good?” you ask, when you’re halfway in.

“Very,” he sighs. “Wish your piercings were bigger though!”

“Picky picky,” you mutter. The lovely ring of pressure moves along your cock until you get balls-deep. Once you’re in all the way, you press your forehead to his skin, inhale his scent like a weirdo. You just really like how he smells.

"Tell me when you want me to start," you murmur.

He makes an adorable humming noise. "Give me a second…"

You kiss his spine, reach around, shove your arm between the bed and his hips, and find his cock. You wrap your hand around the velvety soft shaft, gently stroke him. He's not any harder, but there's still precome leaking out of the tip. He's trembling a little.

“Mmkay, you’re good to go,” he whispers.

You have to prop yourself up for this. You plant your arms on either side of his waist, your comfy bed absorbing the weight on your hands. You stare down at his defined shoulders, the line of his spine, his neatly trimmed hairline along the back of his neck. You try to move, but you’re too entranced by the view. You’re dumbstruck by his muscles, his calm breathing, the color of his skin, the couple faded freckles that dot his arms, a thin white scar on his shoulder you’ve never noticed before. You are blindsided by the feeling that consumes you when you look at him beneath you.

You would write your soul onto every inch of his body, you would drink liquor from the curve of his spine. If he asked for your heart you would hand it to him on a silver platter. You would give your head and hands and blood to him. You want nothing more than to dream of him every single night for the rest of your life.

That weight which feels like a million warm needles builds in your chest, wells behind your eyes. It's passion and loyalty and care and satisfaction and lust and intimacy and longing and friendship and fondness and joy and the desperate want for a future with him. Your heart is both bottomless and full to bursting.

"I love you," you say.

John turns his head against the pillow so he can side-eye you, frowning. "Okay, did you seriously just say that to me for _the first time_ when my ass is up and you're in my butt!? That's just not right!"

"I love you with your ass up," you say. "I love you contorted into every damn sex position known to humankind."

"You sure know how to make a guy feel spe- ah-!"

You pull your hips back, then push forward. John buries his face into the pillow, his hands clench around the sheets.

"Tell me more," says John, into the bed, and it sounds like a sob. "Tell me why."

You idly thrust in and out of him. Real, real slow. Feels nice and slick and tight, but you don't want to jump the gun here. You want to do what he's asked of you. John moans contentedly beneath you with every movement.

"I love figuring you out. I love how strong you are, both mentally and physically," you say, in time with your thrusts. "I love your stupid jokes, and your smile, and how you satisfy me in every facet. I love that we’ve got a lot in common, that we’ve got nothing in common, I love your paradoxes. I love that- that you're everything I'm not."

You rock in and out of him, gentle, rolling your body calm and steady. Your bed squeaks beneath you. True arousal comes faster than you thought it would-- heat wells in you and stifles your ability to be coherent. So much for ED.

"And all those things you want to do together?" you struggle out. Even going this slow, you're having a hard time talking over the warmth building in your hips. "I- I'm going to ingrain them in my heart, I want all of them too. There wasn't a single thing I heard that I didn't want either."

John is shaking, with pleasure you think, clawing his hands down the sheets. His voice is muffled against the pillow. "Even the part about me wanting you to make your bed?"

"Especially that part," you say, your head lolling back. Your eyes shut, to focus on the complementary feelings in your heart and groin. "I'm going to need some instruction once I'm done slamming you into the mattress."

"You're -nngh- you're being pretty gentle right now, dude."

"'Cuz I want to tell you how much I love you. Not done yet," you mutter, still moving slow and steady. You re-focus, stare at his beautiful back. "Gotta keep my Masculyyne Enyrjjies intact."

He laughs, turns his head against the pillow to shoot you this incredulous look. "Oh my gosh, what? Masculine _what now?_ What does that even mean?"

You're too absorbed in the building arousal to process the question. You thrust a little more, a little stronger, and John whines, hugs the pillow tight. You force yourself to continue. "I love how you keep me on my toes. I love your hair and how tall you are and your gratuitous musculature and your glimmering sapphire orbs and your entire fucking face. I want to- I want to kiss your stupid face."

"Oh-" he moans, squirming beneath you. "Dirk, I want- oh my god, I want everything. Give me everything."

"I love-" your mind short circuits on a particular thrust, when your piercings rub you just the right way. You're quivering, you can't edge yourself anymore. "I love your _tight ass,_ holy shit."

John laughs, light and fluttery. "Now that one's just way too sappy."

You brace yourself against the bed and start fucking him proper. You really need to top more often, this is wonderful. You love how your piercings feel all surrounded by warmth, you love how you’re in control of the pace of your arousal, you love the noise of skin-to-skin contact, you love watching John shudder beneath you. You love the look of how he moves when you push into him, how he tries to brace himself. Oh, fuck, you want to finish inside him. You want him so bad. You up the pace, tension building in your muscles.

“I’m gettin’ close,” you gasp out. “Can you come?”

"I- I don't know," he whines, his voice a happy sob. "I don't care. Come inside me, I want it-" 

You aim to please. It’s not long before you let all the lightning and warmth in you come to breaking point, and you embed yourself deep inside him to pump out all you’ve got. You press your forehead tight to his back as you ride out the orgasm, so exorbitantly happy and in love you feel like you’re going to burst. You guess you _are_ bursting, heh.

Despite the sensitivity and tired contentedness in the seconds after, you manage to whisper into his back, “Wh-what would you like, sunshine? I’ll do anything you want. I-”

He reaches behind himself to squeeze your bicep, with shaky hands. “Come down here and kiss me.”

You slide out of him, oversensitivity sparkling through you. You collapse next to him, and he turns on his side, pulling you in for an entirely-too-satisfying hug. You do as instructed; you return the tight embrace, you kiss his sex-flushed face, you slip a hand between his legs. There’s precome and oil all over, it makes it easy to gently play with him.

Your passionate kisses fade into tender ones, John’s heated face cools as you stroke and touch him. It's such a nice wind-down activity. You start to feel like the embodiment of a cozy nighttime campfire, or the personification of a pillowfort.

He eventually pulls back from you, removes your hand from his junk and plants it on his hip. His glasses are askew and stained, but his expression is pure bliss. You just sort of… happily stare at each other, in the afterglow. You get a little lost in his eyes. You wonder what he’s seeing, in your expressionless voids. 

He speaks up first, a few minutes later. His voice is tender, a little scratchy, worn out from fondness and sex. "You owe me an orgasm now. Which stacks on top of the next orgasm I'm owed, so next time we bone you owe me two whole orgasms!"

You laugh, because _god_ you’re unguarded. “Of course.”

John bites his lip, blue eyes shimmering. They look… they look kind of wet. 

"Dirk. Dirk!" John grabs your face urgently. "That is the first time you have ever laughed properly in front of me."

"What? No way."

"Yes way!" He smooshes your cheeks together. "It wasn't even funny! That's not fair! Why don't you laugh like that at my funnier jokes?"

"Literally none of your jokes are funny," you say, through squished lips. You swat his hands away. You can't stop yourself from smiling. "You'll just have to step up your game, dude."

"Or I'll just have to make you feel all gooey and happy again when we bang!" He grins, wide.

"Maybe I only laugh when I top."

"That's fine! I like having you both ways."

"I’m in shock, I thought you'd exclusively be a dominant ass master," you say, pressing your forehead to his. "Didn't think you'd like bottoming so much."

"Only because I haven't eaten in like, twenty four hours. I might be too embarrassed to get dicked down on a regular basis, haha."

"Pleasant," you say, dryly, and nuzzle his nose with your own. “Speaking of… Can I make you an omelet now?”

He grabs your hands, laces your fingers with his. "Noooooooo, I don't want you to leave…"

"Here. I'll convince you." You pull back and grin manically at him. "How disgustingly moistened does your ass feel right now. Scale of one to ten."

John gives you this deadpan glare. "Wow, now that you've made me aware of that, it's kind of way worse! Fuck you, dude."

"Next time," you say, sticking your tongue out. As the penultimate cherry on the cake, you proceed to open your mouth wide and lick across the entirety of his lips. He chokes out a "Ugh! Ick! Bluh!" and tries to swat you away. You sit up, laughing, and brush back your hair with your fingers. You can tell your 'do is fucked, but who cares.

He does, eventually, get up to go use your bathroom, while you head to your kitchen. You don't bother with putting anything on but your pajama bottoms and an apron.

You were bluffing a little when you said omelets were easy— they are, but you haven’t made enough of them to know how to do it by heart without instructions. You’ve got this basic-ass cookbook made for beginners, and you pull it off the shelf above your sink and flip it to the breakfast section. You commit the recipe to memory after reading it over a couple times, then find eggs, butter, salt, diced ham and green onions and cheddar cheese.

You multitask: start the oven, boil some water to make coffee, grind the beans, tie them up in a sack and drop them in. You cook the ham in a separate frying pan. You heat up some butter in the flattest pan you have. You beat the eggs, not too much, salt them, pour half the mixture into the flat pan. The ham gets transferred over onto the eggy disc when the omelet is more solid, then you crumble the cheese and the onions on top. 

You slide it out of the pan, fold it over onto the plate once you think it’s done. And you see you’ve burnt the bottom a bit, but that one can be yours. You cover it with another plate, to keep the heat in. The second one you make exactly the same, but you learn from your mistake. You take it off a little earlier. Perfectly done.

You turn off the stove, take off your apron, leave the dirty pans for cleanup later. You balance two cups of coffee and two plates and silverware in your arms and head back upstairs to your bedroom. John’s waiting in bed for you, his pajamas back on, his glasses cleaned up, his hair brushed. He’s peering in your lube drawer, apparently in awe over how much you have.

He shuts it when you hand him his breakfast. He’s _inordinately_ pleased that you’re serving him an omelet in bed, and tells you so, like, twelve times. You climb in next to him, settle your plate on your lap, set your coffee on your left bedside table.

You wait for him to take a bite before you. You hope he likes it. He wolfs down three forkfuls before turning to you and grinning.

"You did such a good job!" he says, excitedly, mouth semi-full. "I love it! Thank you!"

You nod, relieved. You take a bite of your own omelet. Yup, certainly… an omelet. Tastes like eggs and ham and cheese, maybe you should have put some more onions in it. Or like, some seasoning? You swivel towards John to tell him so, but your snarky self-depreciating joke dies in your throat once you get a good look at him.

He’s still eating. But there’s wet streaks down his cheeks. A couple tears slipped out without you noticing. You wonder why he’s crying.

“It isn’t that bad, is it?” you ask.

He pauses, swallows his current mouthful. He stares at you like he doesn’t know what you’re talking about, then touches his fingers to his cheeks, feeling the wet trails. He looks at the moisture left on his fingertips, then folds his mouth into a frown. His eyes tighten, he tries to blink it away, but it doesn’t help.

“No…” he says, voice shaking, and the tears come down thick. His face contorts into a heavy sob, and he chokes out, “No… no, not at all! You did such a good job, Dirk!”

There is no transition period, no fade into sadness. It is a sudden break, a collapse in the blink of an eye. Tears flow down his scrunched-up cheeks like a rainstorm. This is not a solemn, quiet breakdown, this is red eyes and snot and shaking and wailing and keening. John cracks into pieces, for the second time in twenty four hours. 

You cannot hear the pounding of your heart over the sound of his grieving. You place your own breakfast on your bedside table. You reach over, take the plate off his lap, pull the fork from between his fingers, remove his glasses, and set it all on his nightstand. 

You wrap your arms around his shoulders and tug him into a hug. He ducks low, fits to you like a big winter blanket, hugs you so tight your breaths come shallow. He sobs, loud and hard, into your shoulder. Your collarbone is drenched instantly, it feels like a waterfall is pouring down your skin.

You realize that… you’ve never actually seen him cry before. Not like this. Did you cause this? You probably said something wrong in your void. Fuck, you shouldn’t have had sex with him, that might have pushed him over the line.

"You did such a good job, Dirk," he sobs, shoulders heaving. "Thank you. Thank you. Thank you so much."

Warmth floods through you. You hold him close to your heart, and kiss the top of his head, and rub his back, and try not to doubt yourself so goddamn much.

*******

The week that follows is remarkably pleasant, for a recovery bootcamp. 

That first day, you pretty much just fuck around in bed and try to have sex a bunch more times. The sex is a spectacular failure. Nobody comes, nobody's hard, and everybody involved knows touching dicks is totally pointless, but you both have a lot of feelings and don't know what else to do with them. Jane comes to check up on John in the afternoon and provide you with updates, and you have to talk to her through your fucking door intercom on your technomancy dock because both John and you are naked as sin, basically embedded in the mattress, and have weird fluids leaking out of even weirder places. Once she hangs up, John gives you full control over your room's security system again, which is a display of trust that makes your heart ache. You both conk out at like, 7PM, and wake up when the sun rises.

Day 2 he wants to jump right back into his job, no holds barred, but you force him to ease into it. It's difficult to convince him not to use his retcon powers. He's afraid that he'll discover he's not vital at all, that Jane and Vriska will be able to handle things fine without him. You get him to settle down by reminding him that, yeah, they can handle things for a while, but they won't be able to actually play the politician role as well as him. _Nobody_ can hold a crowd or a person's attention or get things done smoothly like John. You let him go out and do some pompous, speechy shit in the afternoon, have him appease the human citizens and councils and merchants with some nice words about how the Renounced Empire got creamed. He twists it into an impressive humble-brag.

He sleeps in your bed in the days that follow. You spend a lot of time talking. You help him define what's there, even though it might be —in his opinion— morally bankrupt. He's got to admit that to himself and force himself to stop suppressing his darker subconscious. Even if it hurts or makes him more unsure. He's got to be aware of himself in order to change.

You also do the things that make you… happy. You hold each other whenever you're alone. He starts cooking for you midway through the week, making sure he's got enough time in his slowly re-busying schedule to make you things like lasagna or cacciatore without his retcon powers. You talk about a lot of random shit, like pop culture trash and his family and your Mothers and technomancy. You sketch him, a couple times, but they're mostly silly. Your favorite picture that you make that week is a visceral image of him deepthroating a snausage. In the nights, you repay the two orgasms you owe him, and then some. 

The both of you are very unaware of where his breaking point is, so you make a habit of laying with him on your couch in the evenings, his head on your chest and his long body draped over yours, and you talk about the day and try to find his limits. You never manage to find them, but having him open up as much as he can about what he's done in the political sphere does wonders for his tremors and tense stance. He suppresses little things here and there, but you can tell he's trying as hard as he can not to do so. You'd call him "back to normal" by the end of the week.

You don't want him "normal," though. You want him better.

*******

"< _Okay, so, go over it again,_ >" says Karkat, rubbing his temples. "< _Kankri, bottom feeder of the rancid fecal grub pit, decided to do *what now!?*_ >"

You and Karkat sit on opposite couches in a decked-out reception room. You’re wearing the standard Egbert-designated sexy military finery and a decorative katana, Karkat’s got on an embroidered black qipao that someone forced him into. There’s a coffee table set with tea neither of you are drinking. Also in the room: five Clerks, two hefty Alternian guards, and Kankri himself. He’s standing, hunched over, glaring at the tea like he wants some.

Kankri has every inch of his hands locked down, fingers tied together with metal rings, cuffs over his wrists, arms forced behind his back. This is a temporary measure. As a punishment, you gave some thought to cutting off his hands so his biomancy was nigh-unusable, but John convinced you to try this, first. You got both Karkat and Jade back to the palace after writing them a letter, knowing their location from that blackmail fiasco and all.

“< _I decided to take action and balance out the lack of opportunities we have been provided,_ >” Kankri replies, still staring at the tea set. “< _As redblooded trolls, I feel that the equality had been skewed in-_ >”

And on and on he goes. If it were up to you, you would have cut out his tongue, too. Fortunately, Karkat’s on top of it.

“< _You know what you need!?_ >” he bellows, shutting Kankri up instantly. “< _A nature retreat! Someplace nice and quiet and full of cheerful white noise birds where we can hold hands and sing kumbaya and learn some fucking *empathy* for your fellow man! We’re going back to the basics here!_ > Hey, guards, hand over the key so I can take this absolute fucktruck to a peaceful tree sculpted hideaway in the middle of nowhere and teach him some goddamn manners.”

“What. No. You don’t get to give orders,” you say. “I give orders.”

Karkat glares at you, sinks lower into the couch, and folds his arms like he’s judging you. You sigh, turn towards the highest ranking Clerk in the bunch. “Take Kankri back to his cell, we’ll figure out escort details later. I’d like a moment alone with Vantas here.”

They do as requested. You wait until the crowd shuts the door behind them, then pull a small envelope from your jacket. You hand Karkat the dinner invitation John trusted you to deliver.

It’s printed on fancy black cardstock with a silver border, but the message inside is just a goofy, handwritten, "hi karkat! please come to dinner tomorrow evening. we'll have paella, since there is going to be lots of delicious crunchy shells in it for your freaky troll mouths. also i'm making sure jade is coming so that pretty much forces you to go, right? ;)"

You told John to try and be more transparent to his friends/family when working his manipulations, so his guilty conscience doesn't have to take the brunt of it, but it's having… mixed results. Such as the letter. It gives off the tone that John is prodding Karkat in the ribs until he agrees. Well, one step at a time, you guess.

Karkat glares at the invitation. "Is he cooking?"

"Yeah," you say. 

Karkat’s irises flick up, staring at you. You’ve seen a lot of freaky eyes in your day, but his creep you out. It’s that mutant red. “I see you haven't gotten off your ass and done anything about helping him. I told you, he's going to fall the fuck apart if you don't get him out of there.”

"No," you say, with a surprising amount of confidence. "I'm holding him together."

"Really?" asks Karkat, raising a judgmental eyebrow. "How?"

The simple question leaves you scrambling for an answer, as you rapidly flash through the feelings-fest and comfortable healing of the past week. How can you possibly describe what you’ve been doing with John?

“Loving encouragement,” you say, because it’s the closest thing you can think of.

Karkat narrows his eyes and leans forward. “Are you… smiling? Holy shit, you’re smiling.”

You snap your mouth back to a flat line. “False.”

Karkat laughs, obnoxiously, then says, “You actually have feelings in your eldritch bloodpusher!? Caused by _Egbert?_ That genetically adverse toothgap is the final straw that cracked the Strider mask, huh? Can’t believe it! Wait ‘til I tell Dave.”

You’re drawing your katana on the first syllable of Dave’s name. Karkat raises his arms up in surrender, still laughing. “Okay, okay! Fuck, don’t get your panties all crumpled, I won’t tell him about your crush.”

You sheathe your katana, and can’t help but smugly brag, “Bit more than a crush.”

You expect him to mock you, but instead he leans forward, resting his elbow on his knee and his chin in his hand. He’s wearing an ornate ring of white-gold; it catches the sunlight just right. He looks extremely invested in the conversation, all of a sudden. "Ooo, I love a good romance," he says, a sarcastic tone only barely covering the sincerity beneath. "Do tell, Strider. I'm on the edge of my seat."

*******

You reconvene with John in the evening, in his office. He’s clearly bored out of his mind, scanning pages of documents, rolling them up, dripping black wax on the seam, and then stamping them with his personal seal ring. He doesn’t stop, not even when you walk up to him and stand behind his chair.

“Still working?” you say, resting a hand on his shoulder. He’s taken to wearing a more tailored style of black and blue clothing when he doesn’t absolutely _have_ to put on those flowing Patrician robes. It’s nice not to have to bat fabric out of the way to touch him. “Let’s take a break, go make dinner.”

He doesn’t look at you, continues mindlessly stamping the papers. You wait him out.

"Everyone RSVP’d to my dinner invite except Vriska," he says, frowning. "I know she's not busy. I really want her to come…"

"I can talk to her," you offer. "She's probably pissy about not being able to continue the kismesis with you."

"Nah, that's okay, I should talk to her myself," he says. "I haven't had a good talk with her since all that shit went down. I should probably try to face her feelings head on, right?"

He seems melancholy, so you decide to root further. You ask him what his idea is, and he tells you as much as he knows, and what he wants from Vriska. He wants her to come to dinner, patch things up with a longtime friend, and maintain a hold on the volatile Adviser without a kismesis. He doesn't like admitting that last "want," but you remind him that it's alright to have more than one motive. You think it falls on deaf ears.

Hearing what he wants to do with her, you genuinely believe that his first priority is retaining his friendship with her. He tells you that you can eavesdrop on the conversation he wants to have with her, which you think is dickish to Vriska. The only reason you accept is because you still cannot shake your jealousy. You swear to yourself that you'll leave them alone once you’re confident they wont regress into strange black mind-games.

John, weirdly, knows where she is. She’s sitting on a bench outside the red-brick Archives complex on the top tier of the bridge, in something of an alleyway between buildings. The bench is set on a stone paved balcony with an iron rail, next to narrow staircase that leads down to the middle tier. Nobody’s around; it’s pretty quiet up here. You bet this is “her spot.” Maybe she’ll tell you about it sometime.

You squat on the slanted roof of the Archives, set just behind the bench. You got there by parkouring the shit out of the palace. You’re not too high, only a floor up. You’ll be able to hear them just fine.

You can only see the back of her. She’s watching the sun set, the orange rays shimmering over the river and the distant ocean. She has a book in her lap that she’s not reading. An occasional breeze causes her hair to flit around her like a inky cloud. It’s still chilly, the warmth of spring really only taking hold during the afternoons.

Instead of taking the stairs like a normal person, John flies up from the middle tier of the bridge-city-complex and floats over the railing, waving at Vriska. She makes a noise like she’s startled, then jerks the book up to cover her face. He calmly sits down next to her on the bench. You can see his face in profile, when he looks at her.

“Hey lady,” he says, kindly. He puts an arm around the back of the bench, but doesn’t touch her. “Mind if we chat?”

“< _I’m at a really good part!_ >” she says, into the spine of her book. “< _Stop bothering me!_ >”

“< _Can I tempt you with juicy political gossip?_ >” he says, his accent smooth and upper-class. Vriska lowers her book, glares at him. He grins, continues on in Alternian. “< _So, I might have had a talk with Feferi. We decided that we’re too busy with our respective kingdoms to handle being moirails. We’re still besties, so I’m not too sad about it! It was pretty apparent we didn't have time for each other._ >”

Vriska is appalled, dropping her book on her lap to gesture angrily. "< _Are you an idiot? That's literally the best alliance we had and you just threw it in the wastechute!?_ >"

He sticks out his tongue, teasing her. "Nyeehh, that's what you get for not talking to me for a week! Who's going to make all these important decisions for me when I'm slacking off?"

Vriska gives him this glare that _screams_ 'I don't give a shit.' John appears to ignore it. He continues on. "Anyway, now that I’ve got your attention, I want you to know that Dirk is making me do this whole feelings-exploration thing. So even though you'll probably think it's lame, I want you to know that I actually feel really, really guilty for hurting you so much in the not-fun hatey way. I'm so sorry I've broken your heart, like, a thousand times. I want you to know that you're such a big part of me, like I think the phrase 'thick as thieves' was invented for us. I want you to know that you're important to me, Vriska, even though I don’t agree with you all the time. I want to- uh- I want to…"

John sighs, losing his words. Instead, he chooses to wrap his hand gently around her wrist, so slowly it cannot be misinterpreted as a threat. Vriska looks intrigued as to where he’s going with this. He brings her hand up to his face, then jerks her wrist so she’s forced to lightly pat his cheek. It makes a soft pap noise. Vriska's eyes widen.

"We've never been in the diamonds one before," John says, softly. "I think that's the only one we haven't stamped. We get a bingo if we stamp all four squares."

She frowns at him, for a little while, considering what she's going to do. He lets go of her wrist, but her hand stays where it is. She paps him again, cupping the curve of his jawline. His lips pull up into a warm smile, fondness etched into his features. She strokes his cheekbone with her thumb. She exhales, her face relaxing. 

“You’re a bigger idiot than I thought if you think this freakish quadrant flip is going to work out,” she murmurs, the edge of her words not covering for the softness in her tone. “This is an extreme change.”

“It’s not that extreme, if you think about it.”

“Thinking’s for scrubs,” she says, half-heartedly rolling her eyes. “Buuuuuuut I do want a bingo.”

“I knew you’d want to win,” he says, chuckling. “Let’s give it a shot? No more hurting and no more mean games and no more violent backroom smooches. Let’s go hard, but hard with _friendship,_ okay? By the way, I hope it’s not a deal breaker if I don’t want this to come with benefits. I want to try out that monogamous lifestyle for a bit.”

"Monogamous?" she questions, incredulously.

"Yeah!" he says, grinning. Then, so loud his voice nearly bowls Vriska over, he yells, "I want Dirk to be my boyfriend! We're gonna go steady!"

You nearly fucking fall off the roof. Vriska doesn't notice your scrambling-on-the-shingles noises; she's howling with laughter. "Steady!? Are you six???????? < _Are you gonna- hahahahahahaha- gonna go to the carnival and win a promise ring for him!?_ >"

"Actually that doesn't sound like a bad idea!" he replies, happily.

Vriska stops laughing to point an accusatory finger at him. "No fucking way! As your moirail, I am honor bound to stop you from doing dumb juvenile shit like that! If you're going to do some grand romantic gesture, it's going to be the _best_ grand romantic gesture of _all time!"_

“Yeah!” John yells, enthusiastically. You’re already springing to your feet and parkouring away before you can hear the rest.

*******

The dinner goes well. He makes the paella in a big pan over an open fire set out in some locked away courtyard. The fresh air fills up with the comforting smell of cooked shellfish and the musky, honey-like scent of saffron.

You weren’t able to contact Rose and Dave in time, but John promised another dinner in the summer. Other than that, it’s perfect. Food’s good, weather’s good, drink’s good. Jake pays some raucous complements to John while eating huge mouthfuls of rice. Jane gets a little drunk on white wine. Feferi giggles and laughs and eats her fill, but she has to leave early. Jade spends ten minutes praising her brother’s cooking, despite clearly having no sense of taste whatsoever. Karkat fascinatingly bites through mussels like the shells are made of paper. Roxy eats for three. You sit at the table set out in the back of the courtyard and watch everyone have fun. Vriska chills in the chair next to you, chatting with you about whatever, for most of the dinner. It’s nice. It’s really fucking nice.

John has a talk with his family afterwards, that you aren’t present for. 

He summarizes it for you. He told his sister and his cousins that he "wasn't fine," and the only one even remotely surprised by this was Jake. Which, what the fuck, Jake. John also apologized, said that he wanted to stop casually manipulating them, that he'd try his best to be clear, that Jade should come visit more, and Jane should take a break sometime, and that Jake should get out of that fuckin’ basement and breathe some air that isn't musty with embalming fluid.

Jake and Jane didn’t seem to get it, apparently. You figure they’re so fucking used to it they don't give a shit about the professional/personal crossover. John and Jade's mother raised them to accept it. But even if they don’t understand, you think it's still important for him to try his best to define what he's doing.

The purpose of this is as such: if whatever kindness he shows to his loved ones turns out to be eventually twisted and warped into some sort of selfish gambit, he will know that, at the time, he was truly being selfless. Or conversely, he will know that he was being manipulative, and be forced to confront that. This isn't particularly successful yet, since he's still convinced he's locking stuff away in his subconscious, but it hasn't been very long. The skill of defining himself will come with time and practice, you're sure of it.

Over the next few days, he starts getting nightmares, none particularly sexy. You ask him about it, and he tells you the solution is to sleep alone, for a little. He tells you that he feels "itchy" spending so much time with one particular person, that he wants a couple nights by himself. His request triggers every single one of your insane relationship clinginess issues. Why would he want to sleep alone if he's together with you? Did you fuck something up? Or is he trying to hide something? He tries to reassure you, that he just wants to "recharge," but you don't understand the need for being alone during the night at all.

You are completely unable to see it from his point of view, so you force yourself to roll with it and force yourself to trust him. If you mess this up like you did with Jake, refusing to give him space or reprieve, you will never forgive yourself. 

It's fuckin’ lame, but you're unable to sleep that first night by yourself. You are an anxious ball of nerves, wondering if he still… loves you. Which might be a moot point anyway, due to how he might not actually be in love with you and you're just projecting, and you therefore descend into a cyclical pseudo-analytical thought pit of catastrophic anxiety. 

But it all turns out fine. Surprisingly fine. You still spend time in the evenings for dinner, have a little chat, and part ways. It's only a couple nights solo before he's dragging you back to his bed by the wrist, because he also misses sleeping next to you. Apparently he was being honest; he just needs time alone on occasion. Weird, but you'll accept it.

And thus, life moves on. Sex and politics and keeping each other sane, what more could a guy ask for.

*******

You flip through shitty pulp novels on his bed one night, waiting for him to come join you. 

You’re sitting on top of the covers, in your pajama pants, skimming through the latest release of some bad harlequin shit. You tend to enjoy the same literature as John, although for completely different reasons, but he thinks your plot-summary trash-talking is hilarious so it all works out.

He enters his room, dressed for sleep, looking plain baffled. He sits down on the side of the bed with a long, loud sigh. You set the book on the nightstand, then scoot to the edge of the bed to sit next to him. He blinks at you, slowly.

“Dirk,” he says, like he’s about to scold you. He narrows his eyes, like he's reading a confusing newspaper article. "I think I love you?"

"Don't say it if you don't mean it," you state, deadpan.

He blows his bangs out of his eyes, then falls back against the bed, arms spread out wide. You bounce up a little, from the impact of him hitting the mattress. He's frustrated, his mouth crumpled into a frown.

"It's so hard to know if I'm in love or not," he tells you. "I don't know what I'm feeling when I'm feeling it, but I guess I kind of recognize it when it's absent? Like, I swear I felt it when we had sex right after you brought me back from your void."

"That might have been lust," you say.

"Oh yeah, definitely just lust. That's why I had the biggest raging hard on of all time," he says, winking at you. He's got a point there. He continues on. "I know passion and intimacy and commitment and stuff are all different things, but I'm _pretty sure_ they all collided at that moment to create something… something really nice, that I haven't felt since."

You raise an eyebrow. It’s not particularly how you wanted his end of a love confession to go, but hell, you'll take it.

"So, I dunno, I think I _am_ already in love with you," he sighs, depressed. "I just don't get to experience it if it isn't like… Mindblowing once in a lifetime gooey romance novel moments. Man, I have no clue if I'm just _so depressed_ I'm feeling nothing at all towards you on the daily or if I'm just unable to define it! Or a weird combination of both? Either way, it's not fair that I only get to feel things when they're super intense."

"Hey, c'mon, it's all good. That's what we're working on," you say, stroking his hair. "You just have to remember that one thing that you want and try to accomplish that. And you celebrate the small victories along the way."

It's one of those 'do as I say not as I do' pieces of advice. You're pretty fuckin’ bad at all that, but you think John will be able to accomplish it.

"Small victories, huh?" He looks up at you, mouth flat, thinking hard about something. "My birthday's tomorrow."

You physically recoil. Your heart stops. You had no fucking idea. You knew there was a ball going on this weekend, but you didn’t think it was a goddamn birthday party. Nobody’s mentioned _anything._ You have _nothing_ prepared for him. “It’s your- what? Holy shit. I had no fucking idea, I-”

He giggles. “Yeah, I like to keep the actual date on the down low! But hey, now we’re even? We should have some combined belated birthday present day. Like we go horse riding to a tasty pheasant roast or something. And then after we play a sick prank on Vriska. Happy Birthday to us.”

You fist bump in agreement. You’re still sort of bitter, but next year you’ll be sure to remember, and get something nice for him. He sits up, next to you, his arms resting on his thighs. He grins so wide you can see the sparkle on his teeth.

“Although you deserve a waaaaaaaay better birthday present,” he says. “I’d give you the world if you asked it of me.”

You try to hide how fluttery that bad trope makes you feel. "That's… so cheesy. ‘Give you the world’ is so fuckin’ played-out, dude."

He winks at you. "No it's not, I'm putting a cool and unique spin on it, since I can _literally_ give you the world. As Patrician and all."

A voice in the back of your head tells you that’s one hell of an offer, that you can take all that power and warp it and twist it to suit you. He’ll give you anything? What if you actually take him up on that? What if that horrible thing inside you comes to head again? You're in such a high position of power and trust that you could do some serious damage.

But those thoughts, oddly, don’t make your heart throb with anxiety, or guilt, or anything. With an astounding clarity, you realize that you cannot fucking kid yourself: at this point, you will _never_ hurt him on purpose. Besides, you trust him enough to catch on if you go all dark!Dirk on him.

"Wrap it up for me next year, then," you say, letting it flow past you. "How old are you going to be? Big 30, right?"

“Bluh, yeah, that’s so old!” he says, jokingly, then shifts into something more contemplative. He turns his head away from you to stare at the wall, smiling thoughtfully. “I used to be comforted by that, you know. I would always think of it as a progress bar, like, ‘well, at least I’m about 75% done. Only another ten years.’ The Patrician tends not to have a long life expectancy, haha. Mom managed to claw her way to fifty-ish, but that’s the maximum.”

You reach across his lap and clasp his hand in yours. He squeezes back, and flashes you a kind smile. His voice is thoughtful, but not depressed or forced through his Patrician persona.

“But my family loves me, and the populace at large loves me, and I’m going to love my daughters, and you love me too,” he says, running his thumb over your knuckles. “So I don’t think I’ve just got ten years left, I think I’ve got _at the minimum_ another twenty years! And that’s… kind of exciting! For the first time in a long time, I can’t wait to see what those next twenty, thirty, forty years hold for me.”

He twists towards you. He lifts your hand up, and presses it against his chest. You feel his heart beat under your palm. You feel his soul, still worn and tired, but you’re honestly not sure if you’d be able to pull it out at the moment. 

“I’m so glad I met you,” he continues, smiling at you with an earnest grin. “Before you, I honestly didn’t think I wanted to die? This sounds so stupid, but I was legit surprised you were able to bring me to Death that last time. Dying frightened me. I didn’t realize it until now, I mean, hindsight is 20/20 and all, but didn’t want to _die,_ I wanted to just… disappear. Not exist at all. Like I was never born. I was so lonely. I was- am- so self-hatey and guilty…”

At moments like these, the best you can do is provide physical comfort. You slip your hand away from his chest to lace your fingers with his once again.

“I don’t think I’m all that much better yet,” he says, smirking. “But at least one thing changed.”

“What?”

“I don’t feel lonely,” he says. “It’s just, gone. Just like that. What’d you do, man? What black magic did you cast on me?”

You shrug. “I just gave you something to hang onto, I guess. You only need one thing.”

“And you are the thing, it is you,” he says, leaning towards you. 

He stares at you, like he wants to hammer a point in. One that’s not making it through your dense skull. You like the sentiment, but you don’t quite understand what he’s getting at until he phrases it in a different way.

“Dirk. I can’t wait to see what the future holds with you.”

You become whole, when he tells you that.

You guess it hasn’t really hit you until now. That you… actually did something right. That you really, truly made a difference. 

You saved his life.

A desperate sort of laughter bubbles up in you, a tension both in your chest and behind your eyes. Your void pools out of your pupils, black tears streaming down your cheeks as your breath comes in shudders. Your lips pull into a smile, and you begin to truly sob.

Happiness comes from completion. From overcoming. For a rare moment, you are finally confident and sated. That for all your faults, you have finally realized that you are good enough for someone.

John takes your face between his hands, and lets you cry, and looks at your tears like he wants to lick them up like the weird motherfucker he is. He stares into your eyes with a slowly growing warmth, a fondness and love that glows through his smile and his expression.

"Mindblowing once in a lifetime gooey romance novel moments," he slowly repeats, realization sparkling through his eyes. "I guess we're due for another right now, huh?"

He kisses you once, softly, but that's not enough for either of you. You embrace each other— you wrap your arms around John's waist, he pulls you in with a tight hug around your back. You smash your face into his shoulder and neck, breathe him in, and he presses his cheek to your head, like he cannot stand detaching himself from you. You leak black, drippy void all over his pajamas as you cry gently against him.

He whispers your name into your hair, then tells you the words you've so longed to hear. But you already know. You already know.

You will get better, and he will get better, and you both will grow. You're not going to destroy anything, or ruin it, or make it worse. You will hold each other together and you will no longer crumble or break. In this moment with him, you are so content and complete; confidence shines down to your very bones.

You know, beyond the shadow of a doubt, that it's all going to be okay.

  


  


**THE END**

  


  


  


  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And thus, the catacombs series comes to a close. Thank you for reading, everyone. 
> 
> Onto the big end-of-fic gallery!
> 
> * * *
> 
> **DVD EXTRAS**
> 
>   * [Jokey fake alternate ending](https://oxfordroulette.dreamwidth.org/96853.html)
>   * Dance party fic soundtrack [[8tracks](https://8tracks.com/oxfordroulette/i-want-you-to-change-it-all-i-m-gonna-make-it-better)] [[stayed up all night](http://suan.fm/mix/SJKrNubm7)] [[track list](http://oxfordroulette.tumblr.com/post/175726294672/the-only-3-instruments-dirk-can-play-are-trap-set)]
>   * [Bonus Sexy Sex Serket Theater: Jake and Vriska FUCK and it's WEIRD](https://oxfordroulette.dreamwidth.org/85887.html) (takes place after Dirk and John have the big fight in the hallway)
>   * [My VV tag on tumblr with TONS of bonus illustrations/q&as](http://oxfordroulette.tumblr.com/tagged/vanitas-vanitatum)
>   * I'd like to write a bonus DirkJohn PWP but I'm out of ideas for what weirdo kinks/scenarios to write. So [send me a tumblr ask](http://oxfordroulette.tumblr.com/ask) as to what you want to see! (side note: this PWP will _not_ be posted on AO3 so you shall have to follow my tumblr to keep track of when I post it)
> 

> 
> **FANWORK GALLERY**
> 
> _Fanart_
> 
>   * [Really cute headshots of the Strilondes](https://sweatersketchbook.tumblr.com/post/171070198071/some-lovely-eldritch-strilondes-from)
>   * [A creepy shot of Dirk grinning after John punched him](https://dandelion-in-a-top-hat.tumblr.com/post/171822163724/so-i-had-to-draw-this-scene-from-vanitas-vanitatum)
>   * [Neato profile shot of Dirk sans blindfold (glowy eyes!)](https://kanyanyan.tumblr.com/post/171999731100/dirk-from-oxfordroulettes-vanitas-vanitatum-i)
>   * [A very neat John-based piece ft. Extended Block Metaphor](http://nachttour.tumblr.com/post/176605074405/vanitas-vaniatum-you-want-dirkjohn-you-want)
>   * [Some gorgeous glamour headshots of John and Dirk.](https://www.instagram.com/p/Bq_mgJfnzMZ/?utm_source=ig_share_sheet&igshid=15e67o0eyxn7u)
> 

> 
> _Other Cool Stuff_
> 
>   * [A cool shortfic about Jane's perspective and a future Patrician (written before the twin reveal!)](https://www.wattpad.com/551895824-a-thing-the-outlines-i-noticed)
>   * [Dope video edit set to SICK DANCE BEATS](http://johns.tumblr.com/post/176073067853/fanedit-for-oxfordroulettes-vanitas-vanitatum-on)
> 

> 
> _NSFW Funtime Corner_
> 
>   * [Sweet fanart of Dirk with two dicks stuffed in his mouth, which, fuck yeah.](http://naughtypelli.tumblr.com/post/170956291890/okay-so-this-fic-is-slowburn-and-the-closest)
>   * [I know what you're thinking: why wasn't there any skullfucking when Dirk has a pucker hole in his eye that can expand to dick-size?? Well, don't worry, this fic's got you covered](https://archiveofourown.org/works/14120361/chapters/32537412)
> 

> 
> Let me know if I missed something you made, and drop me a link if you make anything new! I fucking shit myself over fanwork, I love it all.
> 
> * * *
> 
> Please leave a comment and let me know what you thought, or what your favorite part was, or if anything made you cry, or if you want to try cooking delicious soup dumplings now. Anyway, thanks for reading my 150k word Discworld joke! I hope you had fun. If you have any bonus AU questions, I will always answer them [over at my tumblr.](http://oxfordroulette.tumblr.com/)


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